A formative period for Spanish history began with the Roman conquest at the end of the third century BCE. Roman political control thereafter expanded over most of the peninsula and lasted through the fourth century CE, as Iberia became one of the most Romanized portions of the empire. Fundamental components of Iberian life were set in place and continued to influence later developments long after the Roman Empire ended. Roman innovations and foundations underlay many medieval and modern developments in Spain and remain strong and apparent in Spain today in such areas as language, law, and religion.
Initially, the process of Romanization in Iberia proceeded slowly, as the Romans followed the pattern that their ancestors had set in taking over the Italian Peninsula, making treaties with groups who agreed to join them voluntarily and conquering those who chose to resist. Nonetheless, it took about 200 years for the Romans to establish full control in Iberia, whereas they conquered Gaul in a decade. The difficult terrain and the traditions of local rule in Iberia made the Roman conquest extraordinarily difficult, and there was scarcely a year in two centuries that did not see fighting in one or more regions.
Soon after the conquest, the Romans divided the area into two parts: Hispania Citerior and Hispania Ulterior (Closer and Farther Spain, respectively). All they really controlled by the end of the Punic Wars was a band along the Mediterranean coast and beyond Gibraltar as far as Cádiz. That was the part of the peninsula with the greatest number of towns and cities, and the part longest influenced by the other Mediterranean civilizations. Because larger political entities did not exist previously in Iberia, the Romans had to deal separately with one small group after another. They focused on cities and towns in this segmented expansion, making treaties with existing towns and tribes that agreed to join the Roman world, and giving their inhabitants affiliate Roman status. Towns or regions that resisted they forced into submission, often through long wars. This was the case with Numantia, which fell only after a lengthy siege.
Though the Romans had become involved in what they called Hispania only to thwart the ambitions of Carthage, they were quick to recognize the advantages the peninsula offered. These ranged from the psychological – as one historian said, they could claim to have reached the end of the world where Hispania touched the boundless ocean – to the practical and mundane. Control of the peninsula would help secure the sea routes to western Gaul, Britain, and the mouth of the Rhine. The Roman republic and later Roman emperors benefited from taxes on land and profits from mineral exploitation in the peninsula. Several would-be emperors owned profitable estates there, and in fact launched from Hispania their campaigns to secure the imperial throne. Merchants and bureaucrats also established themselves successfully in the peninsula as the Romans settled in.
Rome's authority in the inland areas of the peninsula spread slowly, reaching its fullest extent only after two centuries. Even then, the peninsula remained incompletely Romanized, but in the cities, regardless of their origin, a process of acculturation began almost immediately after the Romans moved in, and proceeded as local and imported customs interacted and blended. The Romans imposed their law, and members of the local elite who wished to deal with the Roman authorities and to function in the new system had to learn Roman law and the Latin language. Elements of Roman law and Romance variants of Latin remain in Spain today. Intermarriage fostered biological integration and cultural assimilation as well. Prominent among those who intermarried were Roman soldiers who remained in Spain and received land when their enlistments ended. Later, Roman immigrants who sought opportunities in Spain secured local marriages and the connections they brought. Roman religion, including the cult of the emperor and the many mystery religions of Roman or eastern Mediterranean origin, spread to Spain with the immigrants and became established there.
An important key to understanding the Roman period in Spain is the story of the towns and cities that linked the various parts of the peninsula together for the first time and connected it to the wider Mediterranean world. In some cases, the Romans created new municipalities, often by offering land to retiring and disabled soldiers. Newly created municipalities under direct Roman control were called “colonies,” whose inhabitants were Roman citizens enjoying tax privileges. The implantation of colonies began very early on. In 206 BCE, the Roman general Publius Cornelius Scipio established a colony of veteran soldiers at the new town of Itálica, near Seville, now an important archeological site. Other colonies joined existing municipalities, such as the small town of Mérida, or Tarragona (Roman Tarraco), already a sizeable city and the chief town of the Cessetani tribe. Tarraco became the capital of Hispania Citerior. In time, indigenous communities became associated with the Romans and received the title of municipia (sing., municipium). Officials of such towns received full Roman citizenship and the ordinary inhabitants became Latin citizens, a lesser status that did not confer tax exemptions.
Where the terrain permitted, Romans laid out their towns on a common, rectilinear pattern with the principal north–south street, called the cardus, intersecting with the main east–west street, the decumanus, usually to form a main square. The construction of public works also aided in the Romanization of a town. On being incorporated into the Roman world, both new towns and restructured existing towns received civic improvements of various types. Most Roman municipalities had walls, bridges over local rivers, and aqueducts to assure the water supply. The aqueduct of Segovia is the most prominent one remaining today, but portions of others exist in Mérida and Tarragona. Roman houses followed a typical Mediterranean pattern, with rooms opening into a central atrium and presenting an easily fortified face to the street. Tile roofs and stone, brick, or plaster exteriors provided a durable structure, relying on local materials. This model persisted through medieval times in both Christian and Islamic Spain and was the style exported by Spaniards to the Americas. In addition to practical structures such as aqueducts and bridges, most Roman towns had temples (later churches), public baths, schools, and, in the case of larger towns and cities, stadiums, race courses, and elaborate theatres and amphitheatres.
The most important cities of Roman Spain gained that status because they offered strategic advantages. Tarraco, the capital of Hispania Citerior, sat on a strategic hilltop, which its previous rulers, the Cessetani, had already walled. With their huge pre-Roman lower courses, Roman additions, and medieval repairs, Tarraco's walls remain impressive in the twenty-first century. Only five days from Rome by sea, Tarraco also had a road link to the Ebro valley and thus quick access to the interior of Spain. One of the most prominent cities inland from Tarraco was Caesar Augusta (now Zaragoza/Saragossa), whose name indicates its foundation as a colony by Emperor Augustus between 19 and 15 BCE. Roman Caesar Augusta had a bridge over the Ebro River that offered access to a wide area of the Iberian interior. Modern Zaragoza overlays and obscures the Roman constructions, but visitors can still sense the importance of its strategic location. The natural harbor at today's Cartagena on the Mediterranean served as an ideal site for a town in Carthaginian times, and the Romans made it a prominent port for the entire southeastern region of Hispania Citerior. They also minted coins there.
In the southwest of Hispania Ulterior, Roman ships and boats came up the Guadalquivir River as far as Corduba (modern Córdoba), where a major bridge spanned the river. The city was a Roman regional capital, founded as a municipium in the second century BCE and made a colony of army veterans under Julius Caesar and Augustus. Though Córdoba's Islamic monuments and city plan are its most prominent features today, in Roman times the city impressed visitors with its aqueducts, temples, and public baths, plus a theatre and an amphitheatre. Down the Guadalquivir River from Córdoba, near Itálica, lay the town of Hispalis (Seville), which was in existence from the time of Julius Caesar. In fact, he may have founded it himself during his short tenure as governor of Hispania Ulterior in 61 and 60 BCE. Hispalis became a prominent river port with access to the Atlantic Ocean, which undoubtedly explains its ascendancy over Itálica. In Roman times, Hispalis was fully walled and had an aqueduct – part of which is still standing – to provide water to the citizenry. At the mouth of the Guadalquivir, Gades (Cádiz) was already an ancient city when the Romans arrived. With its huge bay and ideal defensible site, Gades served as a strategic port on Rome's Atlantic shipping routes and gained additional wealth from fishing. Julius Caesar gave the city's residents full Roman citizenship, and the urban infrastructure included temples, an aqueduct, a theatre, and an amphitheatre.
Roman Hispania.
Mérida, on the Guadiana River in western Spain near the Portuguese border, retains many architectural and engineering reminders of its Roman past. The city began life as Augusta Emerita, a colony for the veterans of Augustus's campaigns in the northwest of the peninsula. It retains its Roman bridge, the remains of several aqueducts, a theatre, an amphitheatre, and a number of other monuments. In addition, the city's stunning National Museum of Roman Art, built in 1986, houses an impressive collection of Roman statuary, mosaics, and diverse objects of art, commerce, warfare, and common household use. Many other towns and cities all over the Iberian Peninsula also conserve architectural remains and artifacts of their Roman past. For example, Barcelona (the Roman Barcino) has an unusual Roman museum one storey down from modern street level, where visitors walk through several blocks of Roman streets, alongside the foundations of Roman buildings. The huge Roman aqueduct of Segovia, the best preserved in the peninsula, has long served as the emblem of the city.
Even today, Latin adjectival forms often appear in formal usage for Spanish cities and other institutions: matritense for Madrid; onubense for Huelva, the Roman Onuba; abulense for Ávila; hispalense for Seville, among many others. Madrid's oldest university is the Universidad Complutense, originally founded in Alcalá de Henares, the Roman Complutum.
Despite these pervasive remnants of the Roman presence in Spain, the process of Romanization was never complete throughout the peninsula. Eastern and southern Hispania assimilated most completely into the Roman world, following their long tradition of contact with successive Mediterranean civilizations. Farther to the west and north, Roman influence faded, with some notable exceptions. The northern mountainous areas were the least affected by contact with Rome; indeed, some areas take pride in the fact that Rome never conquered them. Throughout the peninsula, urban areas were more romanized than rural areas, and urban elites assimilated more completely than poorer segments of the population. Within many cities of Roman Hispania, Jewish communities began to form in the second century CE, populated by refugees who fled westward following the Romans' destruction of the temple of Jerusalem in the first century CE. From then on, the Jewish communities in Iberia maintained a continuous existence and developed a rich culture, creating the Sephardic branch of European Jewry.
During the Roman period, the rural economy of Iberia changed considerably. Smallholdings, characteristic of pre-Roman days, declined as peasant farmers competed unsuccessfully with larger holdings amassed by Roman immigrants and members of the local elite. The large landowners could afford to acquire slaves and operate on a much larger scale, producing for a network of markets both within and outside Iberia. The Roman style of villa – a large complex with the owner's residence, housing for the workers, barns, and workshops – spread in the more Romanized portions of the peninsula.
Large landowners sold their products in urban markets all over Roman Spain, and exported products by sea to other markets around the Mediterranean and elsewhere. Olive oil traveled in large pottery amphorae to Italy and the Rhine valley. Wine also traveled to Italy; the ruins of Pompeii contain amphorae for Spanish wine. Exports from Hispania also included wheat, flax, wool, and esparto grass, both in their raw states and processed into biscuit, cloth, rope, and baskets. Spanish-produced pottery and glass also made their way into the export markets of the Mediterranean and up the Rhone and other rivers into continental Europe. The ancient mineral trade in gold, silver, copper, cinnabar, and lead also continued in the early centuries of Roman rule. As the easily extracted deposits ran low and production in other Roman provinces increased, however, Spain's role as a leading supplier declined.
Some of the earliest Mediterranean traders to reach Iberia came because of the abundant fish available along the coasts. Fishing and fish processing continued to be highly developed in Roman times. Entrepreneurs salted and exported fish and fish products at numerous coastal locations where bays or sheltered beaches lay close to supplies of salt. The town of Baelo Claudia was an important center of the fish-salting industry. Founded in the time of the emperor Claudius (41–54 CE) as a municipium, Baelo Claudia lay on the Atlantic coast between Gibraltar (the Mons Calpe of the Romans) and Cape Trafalgar and had important ties with Tangier in North Africa. The archeological remains of Baelo Claudia today show the installations where freshly caught fish were salted, either whole or filleted, and packed in pottery vessels for transport. Baelo Claudia also produced the widely popular fish sauce the Romans called garum, known to earlier inhabitants as garon. Omnipresent in the western Roman world, garum had an honored place in Rome's imperial kitchens, as well as in the homes of more modest citizens. To produce garum, workers dumped layers of fish, fish parts, salt, and various flavorings into stone vats under the hot sun, and then let the mixture ferment for several weeks. The process resulted in a pungent sauce that would keep for months, or even years, in clay pots. That meant that merchants could export garum for long distances and reach a wide range of consumers. Garum sold throughout the ancient Mediterranean for centuries, but Baelo Claudia suffered an earthquake in the second century CE that cut its easy access to the hinterland. The settlement declined thereafter and finally was abandoned in the seventh century.
Due to Spain's importance in the Roman world, there were frequent contacts and migrations between Italy and Hispania. The emperors Trajan and Hadrian were born in Spain, and the Emperor Theodosius I as well. Marcus Aurelius, the emperor and Stoic philosopher, was of Spanish ancestry, though born in Rome. In philosophy and literature, Seneca, Quintilian, Martial, and Lucan were all born in Hispania, of either Hispanic or Roman parentage. Wherever they traveled, the Romans brought their religions with them, including the civic cult of allegiance to Rome and later emperor-worship. Roman soldiers who had served in distant parts of the empire adopted religions from the eastern Mediterranean and beyond, adding them to the panoply of cults that flourished under Rome.
Of fundamental importance for the later history of Spain, Christianity came early to Iberia, certainly as early as the second century. There are even traditions that Saint James and Saint Paul preached in Spain. The early history of Iberian Christianity is obscure, though it was probably linked initially with the establishment of Jewish communities in eastern and southern Spain during the early Jewish diaspora in the second century. By the third century, the details of Christian history in Iberia become clearer. By then, Christian communities were large enough to have their own bishops and to maintain ties with the papacy in Rome. The persecution of Christians by Roman authorities in Hispania occurred sporadically. The bishop of Tarraco, Fructuosus, and two of his lieutenants suffered martyrs’ deaths by burning in 259 CE, and the patron saints of Hispalis, Justa and Rufina, also fell victim to martyrdom under the Romans in the late third century.
Early in the fourth century, Christianity received recognition as a legal religion throughout the Roman Empire, and thereafter expanded rapidly. By the 390s it became the legal and official religion of the empire, under Emperor Theodosius I. By then, Christianity had become fully established in Spain. The most important early act of the Spanish church occurred at the Council of Toledo in 400, when the clergy announced their allegiance to the Nicene Creed as the basis of their faith. The church in Spain remained largely independent of secular authority, having secured immunity from taxation and the right to judicial autonomy from Roman authorities.
Over the course of the third and fourth centuries, the western portions of the Roman Empire experienced economic and demographic alterations. Popular histories often refer to this as the decline of the Roman Empire, but the decline did not affect all parts of the empire equally. The eastern provinces continued to be stronger and more politically coherent; most changes took place in the west. There, the population declined due to a variety of causes, and the remaining population drifted away from the large cities toward increasingly self-sufficient estates in the countryside. Imperial defense suffered from these changes in the west, and the Romans found it more and more difficult to maintain their northern frontiers against the tide of outside groups that wanted to penetrate the empire. By the late fourth century, there were separate emperors in the eastern and western portions of the empire, as well as separate military commands.
Early in the second decade of the fifth century, one of the Germanic groups, the Visigoths, entered Spain, initiating a new period in Spanish history. Their story began in northeastern Europe, but it is important to trace their origins and early history for the insights that history brings to their later career in Spain. Like other Germanic groups, the Visigoths formed from the amalgamation of several related and unrelated groups in a process that scholars have dubbed “ethnogenesis.” After a period of wandering through Eastern Europe, they established themselves in the late third century in the area of Dacia to the north of the Danube River. During this period, they adopted certain Roman customs, serving as federates of the empire and furnishing troops and local leaders in return for an annual subsidy. While in Dacia they gained considerable respect for Roman institutions and accepted conversion to the Arian variety of Christianity.
Their conversion was due in large measure to the work of Ulfila (or Wulfila, 310–81), the son of Cappadocian parents living among the Visigoths as prisoners captured in Visigothic raids and then enslaved. Many of the Cappadocians and some of the Visigoths were already Christian. With the addition of new converts, the Christians among the Visigoths made up a sufficiently large number for them to feel justified in petitioning the authorities to name a bishop to lead them. They nominated Ulfila for the office, and he traveled into the Roman Empire and received ordination from a group of bishops, among them Eusebius, at this time bishop of Nicomedia. Ulfila's ordination was to prove a mixed blessing. He became an Arian Christian and converted his flock accordingly. Shortly after he left the Roman Empire, however, the Council of Nicea declared Arianism – the belief that God the Son was a lesser figure than God the Father – a heresy, leaving Ulfila and his flock outside the definition of Catholic Christian orthodoxy.
Despite this doctrinal discrepancy, the fact that Ulfila converted the Visigoths meant that they absorbed much of the classical Christian tradition. Ulfila's main tool for conversion was his Gothic Bible, a product of many years’ work. In the process, Ulfila transformed Gothic into a written language, devising an alphabet for the purpose based on the Greek alphabet. Ulfila had great success in converting the Visigoths. Within twenty years after his death, the entire nation had embraced Arian Christianity.
During the same period, the Visigoths increasingly wanted to move into the Roman Empire, for a number of reasons. Like other Germans, the Visigoths had traded with the empire and had come to appreciate the advantages of Roman civilization and the ecology of the Mediterranean region. Having adopted agriculture from the Romans, they recognized that the lands around the Mediterranean offered better conditions for agriculture. Those lands were more arid and intrinsically poorer than the lands of Northern Europe, but they were easier to plow and manage, given the tools and techniques available at the time.
Ancient farming techniques relied on the so-called “scratch plow” and on simple harnessing devices for draft animals. Such techniques worked well on the light soils of the Mediterranean and the Middle East. They were only marginally effective for most of the lands north of the Alps and the Pyrenees, however, which had abundant rainfall, dense vegetation, and heavy, compact soil. By the tenth and eleventh centuries, the invention and diffusion of new, heavier plows and better harnesses would make it easier to cultivate the lands in Northern Europe, but those days were still far in the future as the Visigoths looked longingly toward the south. Even so, the Roman agricultural techniques that the Visigoths and other Germanic groups adopted allowed a rise in population, which created demand for more lands with more friable soils.
In addition to the pressure from their own numbers, the Visigoths and other Germanic groups faced pressure from the invasion of nomadic Huns from central Asia in the fourth century and from its intensification in the early fifth. To escape the Huns, the Germans sought to enter Roman territory. At this point, the Visigoths had formed up as an amalgamation of several Gothic groups, some outsiders, and even some Huns and Alans (Iranian nomads). In 376, the eastern emperor, Valens, allowed the Visigoths to enter Moesia, south of the Danube in the southeastern Balkans, as the first full group of northern outsiders to enter the boundaries of the empire.
The Visigoths continued to act as federates of the empire under their Christian chief Fridigern, but disputes with the Romans over promised subsidies soon arose. The Visigoths then violated the terms of their agreement and ravaged Moesia and a large part of Thrace, where only the cities could resist them. Emperor Valens rallied an army and tried to check their expansion, but the Visigoths, aided by some Ostrogothic horsemen, inflicted a defeat on the Roman army at Adrianople and killed the emperor himself on August 9, 378. That was a major military defeat and an even more chilling psychological blow, given that an alien army had defeated Roman troops on Roman soil. The new emperor, Theodosius, took up the imperial defense and was able to reach an agreement with the Visigoths in 382. They would remain in Moesia as self-governing vassals and would supply the empire with troops.
That situation continued throughout the lifetime of Theodosius, but on his death in 395 the Visigoths reconsidered their position. They seem to have distrusted the new emperor and may have feared that a settled life would cause them to stagnate and lose power. In any case, the Visigothic nobles chose Alaric of the Balthas family as their king and agreed to follow his lead. Theodosius may have promised Alaric a command in the Roman army. If so, his death removed an incentive for the new king to abide by the terms of federation. Instead, Alaric led the Visigoths on a rampage through Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece, plundering the countryside but generally sparing the towns. The Roman military chief in the west, Stilicho, though nominally under the authority of the western emperor, Honorius, took an army to the Peloponnesus and intercepted Alaric. After some desultory fighting, the two leaders came to an agreement and disengaged their forces. Thereafter, in 397, the eastern government of Arcadius granted Alaric the title of magister militum (chief military commander) in Illyricum, a province along the eastern coast of the Adriatic. Apparently, Stilicho had persuaded Alaric to help bring Illyricum under western Roman authority and out of eastern control.
The story of the Visigoths for the next decade and a half is complicated. It seems to have depended in part on the desires and plans of Alaric, who apparently still wanted a high imperial command for himself and a worthwhile homeland for his followers. Aided by a diversionary tactic conducted by the Ostrogoth Radagaisus, Alaric invaded Italy and occupied Milan in hopes of capturing the Emperor Honorius. Stilicho raised the siege and pursued Alaric to Pollentia, where, early in 402, he inflicted a sharp defeat on the Visigoths. Alaric agreed to move back to Illyricum, but the next year he tried another invasion of Italy and again was repelled.
At that point in their history, the Visigoths in all probability numbered no more than 100,000 people, with 4,000 to 5,000 members of the elite and perhaps 25,000 to 30,000 warriors. The total numbers included significant non-Gothic elements, plus ex-slaves and ex-soldiers who joined with the Visigoths during their Italian campaigns. Still hoping to secure an area for his followers to settle, Alaric again invaded the Italian Peninsula and moved quickly toward Rome, placing it under siege. He demanded a huge ransom from the city, and because imperial aid from Honorius in Ravenna was not forthcoming, the Roman Senate acceded to his demands. Alaric then opened negotiations with the government of Honorius, demanding the provinces of Noricum, Venetia, Istria, and Dalmatia for the Visigoths. Even though Alaric eventually scaled back his demands to the single province of Noricum, Honorius and his advisers refused.
Once again, Alaric marched on Rome. He forced the Senate to elect Priscus Attalus as a rival emperor, but Attalus proved no more accommodating than Honorius. In August 410, the Visigoths entered Rome and sacked the city for four days. As they wanted mainly moveable goods, they did not inflict too much physical damage on the city, but they dealt a harsh psychological blow to the Romans. The Visigoths also secured a number of important captives in Rome, among them Emperor Attalus and Galla Placidia, sister of Honorius. Traditionalists among the Romans blamed their plight on Christianity, which had become the sole legal religion of the empire in the 390s. In their view, Christianity had caused a collapse in the Roman system that allowed the Visigoths to break into the empire. That accusation motivated the Christian theologian Augustine, bishop of Hippo, to write The City of God, in which he drew a sharp distinction between the inevitable progress of Christianity and the often-disturbing vicissitudes of the secular sphere.
From Rome, Alaric led his people on a rapid advance through southern Italy, with Africa as his apparent goal. At Rhegium, the ships for the initial passage to Sicily were wrecked, and, before Alaric could reach Naples to find other transportation, he died and was given a river burial in the Basentus. The Visigoths elected Ataulf as Alaric's successor. Originally anti-Roman, Ataulf soon became disillusioned with his Gothic followers, according to the contemporary writer Osorius, and decided to integrate his people into what remained of the Roman system. He reached an accommodation with Honorius and agreed to enter Gaul and return it to imperial authority. Accordingly, he entered southern Gaul, establishing strongpoints at the towns of Narbonne, Toulouse, and Bordeaux. He also persuaded Galla Placidia to marry him, an event that caused her brother Honorius to withdraw his support. Ataulf then raised Priscus Attalus again to the imperial title and began probing expeditions into the Iberian Peninsula, but he failed to accomplish much more before his death in 415.
By then, other Germanic groups had crossed the borders into the Roman Empire, just as the Visigoths had done, and Roman forces in the west could not expel them. After Ataulf died, the Visigoths elected Wallia as their king, and he tried to revive Alaric's dream of an African homeland for his people. Once again, shipwrecks caused him to abandon the project, but he still needed a source of grain. To secure it, Wallia reached an agreement with Honorius’ general Constantius. For a suitable supply of food, the Visigoths would return Ataulf's widow Galla Placidia to her brother and would undertake to drive the other Germanic tribes from Iberia in service to Rome.
Spain was not immune from the internal problems that beset the later Roman Empire. The Pax Romana, and the subsequent demobilization of troops, had weakened the peninsula's ability to withstand invasion. In fact, Roman taxation had become so severe that some inhabitants actually welcomed invading barbarians as an alternative to Roman rule. In the years from 409 to 415, three other barbarian groups entered Roman Spain: the Suevi, the Vandals, and the Alans. At the end of the first five years of invasion, they had established themselves in the west and south of the peninsula: the Suevi and some Vandals in Gallecia (later Galicia) in the northwest, the main body of the Vandals in Baetica in the southwest, and the Alans in Lusitania south of the Duero. The remaining parts of the peninsula stayed in Roman hands.
Wallia began the reconquest of Iberia – a task not fully completed until 585 – and was rewarded with Roman recognition of the Visigothic sway in southern Gaul. With this, the Visigothic kingdom established a capital at Toulouse, and Wallia renounced sovereignty over the Spanish lands he had conquered. The Visigoths maintained this compact until 456. Under Theodoric I, they pushed the Vandals from Spain into Africa in 429 and later forced the Suevi from Galicia. They virtually annihilated the Alans. In 456 the Visigothic king, Theodoric II (453–66), renounced imperial sovereignty and began the conquest of additional territory in both Gaul and Spain on his own authority. Euric (467–85), the successor of Theodoric II, was able to secure the entire peninsula, with the exception of the northwest and some pockets of Hispano-Roman resistance. At his death, Euric was probably the most powerful ruler in Western Europe.
Soon after Euric's death, the Franks in northern Gaul began to challenge Visigothic control. The Franks’ conversion to Catholicism in 496 was an additional spur to their plans to drive out the Arian Visigoths. Aided by native Catholics in Visigothic territory, by 508 King Clovis and the Franks had pushed the Visigoths from all of Gaul, with the exception of Septimania. The Visigoths lost their capital of Toulouse and temporarily made Narbonne their political center. In the middle of the sixth century, a claimant to the Visigothic throne, Athanagild, asked for assistance from the eastern Roman emperor, Justinian, who sent an army to help secure the throne for Athanagild. In the process, the Byzantine army gained a block of territory in the southeastern portion of Hispania, stretching roughly from the mouth of the Guadalquivir in the west to that of the Júcar River in the east. Although they lost most of it after Justinian's death, Byzantine influence remained strong in southeastern Spain from the 550s to the 620s. Athanagild's main contribution to Visigothic rule in Spain was to establish the capital at Toledo. There it was to remain for as long as the kingdom lasted.
Visigothic legal development shows their accommodation to Roman practice and, at the same time, marks their increasing sophistication. Like other Germanic tribes, they had amassed a large corpus of customary usages, which formed the basis for their legal practice. Major differences existed between Roman written law and Germanic customary law, which had no mechanism to create new laws. In the absence of trained lawyers and judges, interpretations of customary law relied on the collective memory of the elder men of the group. While the Visigothic capital was still in Toulouse, Euric commissioned Leon of Narbonne, a Gallo-Roman jurist, to prepare a national law code for the Goths, written in Latin and based on the older Visigothic laws and customs. In addition, elements of Roman law, including canon legislation, entered the code. The code of Euric applied only to the Visigoths; they allowed the Gallo- and Hispano-Romans living among them to keep Roman law. In 506, Alaric II provided a uniform legal code for those populations, the Lex romana visigothorum, which later became known as the Brevium Alarici regis, or, in English, the Breviary of King Alaric. The Breviary was a compilation of Roman law actually in force in the Visigothic kingdom, with defunct or conflicting legislation deleted.
King Chindaswinth (ruled 642–53) wished to establish one territorial law for all the peninsula and Septimania, instead of the Roman practice, continued by the early Visigoths, of allowing subject peoples to keep their own laws. Expanded by his successors, the Visigothic law code was known as the Liber iudiciorum, the Lex visigothorum, or, much later the Fuero Juzgo. The code included civil and penal legislation, administrative law, and some political regulations. Unlike the Franks or Anglo-Saxons, the Visigothic legislators consciously introduced new laws and did not merely record customs. An examination of the code shows a complete absence of customary usages, and many scholars have assumed that Germanic customary law fell out of use as Roman law took hold. Instead, the legal codes of Spain's various medieval Christian kingdoms reveal that customary law survived alongside the Liber iudiciorum, often in direct contradiction to its provisions.
Arian and Catholic versions of Christianity remained in conflict in the Visigothic kingdom. As governance disintegrated in the later Roman Empire, bishops began to provide many of the services that government officials had once administered. In the formative period of the Visigothic monarchy, members of the ruling class were Arians, whereas their subjects were Catholics, and this religious gulf was a source of constant conflict. The Catholic Hispano-Romans and Suevi regarded their Visigothic conquerors as heretics as well as barbarians and often agreed to support Frankish or Byzantine invasions against their Arian rulers.
To ease these problems and to avoid others, King Reccared announced his conversion to Catholicism in 586. The conversion was largely due to the work of Leander, bishop of Seville. He presided over the third Council of Toledo in 589, when the rest of the royal family, the higher Arian clergy, and most of the Visigothic nobility publicly announced their adherence to Catholicism. They had ample reasons to convert, as many Visigoths had already done. The Visigothic monarchs seemed to have believed that the clergy would make more willing and tractable allies than the lay magnates. Moreover, the Catholic religious hierarchy enjoyed great political power over their flocks and would find it easier to relate to a Catholic monarchy.
Despite these advantages, the alteration of Visigothic religious practices created several upheavals. First, the event marked the beginning of the virtual extinction of the Gothic language in Spain. Latin had served for administrative pronouncements as early as King Euric's code a century earlier. Gothic had survived only as the language of the Arian church. After Arianism was condemned and anathematized, Reccared ordered the seizure and destruction of all Arian books that the authorities could find. As a result, not a single Gothic text has survived in Spain. Vulgar Latin completely replaced Gothic as a spoken language. Some 100 words of Gothic origin are present in modern Spanish, but most scholars believe that they entered Latin before the Visigoths got to Spain, through Germanic connections with the Roman army.
Visigothic administration emanated from the monarchy, with kings theoretically elected by the nobility and the bishops – Arian at first and then Catholic. Royal rule was supposed to be pious, merciful, and just; a king who departed from custom was no longer king. As the Visigothic code expressed the concept: “King you will be, if you do right, and if you do not do right, you will not be king.” Despite such lofty principles, the political life of Visigothic Spain was far from placid. The centrifugal power of the nobility always posed a potential threat to monarchical authority. The nobility tried hard to maintain the principle of elective kingship, while almost every king tried to secure hereditary succession for his heir. Unrest, and at times civil war, followed the death of kings, as nobles raised an elected claimant, while the deceased king's designated heir rallied support in opposition. Sometimes, one or the other side sought outside support. The invasion of Justinian's Byzantine army was the product of a succession crisis, as was the later Muslim invasion. In their attempt to check noble power, after 589 the kings relied increasingly on the national councils of the Catholic clergy.
These national councils, which met at Toledo eighteen times from 589 to 710, resembled the Frankish Marchfields and Mayfields and the Anglo-Saxons’ Witenagemots. Called by the kings, the councils were in part an outgrowth of the national synods of the Spanish church and included a majority of clerics and a smaller number of lay lords. The councils dealt with both ecclesiastical and secular matters, and the kings specified at the beginning of each session what secular matters the council could address. Councils could petition or initiate new legislation, but the kings were free to accept or refuse what they wished. Councils had no power over taxation but did have a limited judicial function.
In the field of education, the Roman municipal schools disappeared soon after the Germanic conquests, as did the individual masters of rhetoric. Although the Jewish communities retained their own academies where professors read and discussed books with their students, the church carried out the bulk of education under the Visigoths. Monasteries were the first to claim educational jurisdiction, and Valencia had the first Spanish monastery school in the late fifth century. The monasteries trained boys destined for the clergy as well as those who simply desired an education. They also provided public lectures in connection with the divine office and independent lectures each day, for six or seven hours in winter and three or four hours in summer. The monasteries also maintained libraries, and although they frowned upon pagan authors, their libraries retained some classical knowledge. The education of females took place almost wholly within the home; any female education outside the home occurred separately from male education.
Cathedrals later began to operate schools as well, with establishments in Zaragoza and Seville, and the most influential one in Toledo. With the establishment of Toledo as the Visigothic capital, that city also became the most important educational center in the peninsula, with one cathedral school and one school operated in connection with the nearby monastery of Agali. These schools aimed above all to educate the sons of the nobility, and the study of liberal arts alternated with physical education. The study of law and medicine continued, but the curriculum emphasized other topics, while jousting, horseback riding, and other martial sports replaced the Roman gymnasia.
Most writers in the Visigothic period had some connection with the church. Paulus Orosius was a well-known writer in the period of transition between late Roman and early Visigothic rule. Of Hispano-Roman ancestry, Orosius was born in Bracara (modern Braga) in the late fourth century, and in the years 415 to 420 visited St. Augustine at Hippo and St. Jerome near Jerusalem. Orosius wrote a universal history (possibly the first by a Christian), in which he revealed himself as a patriotic Spaniard and an ardent devotee of the Roman Empire. Far from condemning the Visigoths for their sack of Rome in 410, he saw them as the only hope for a united Spain and a revitalized Roman Empire. Most of the clerical writers focused on theology and Christian apologetics. The poets among them included Draconcius and Bishop Eugene II of Toledo. Braulio, bishop of Zaragoza in the late seventh century, wrote lives of saints and letters in excellent Latin, and was familiar with the Latin classics. Julian (late seventh century) wrote a biography of Wamba, a Visigothic king, as well as theological and apologetical works in good Latin. Idacius wrote a history of the Visigothic invasion.
There were also some specifically lay writers. Several Visigothic kings left evidence of their literary skill, in particular Reccared, Chindaswinth, Recceswinth, and Sisebute. Among the nobles, a certain Duke Claudius was also a writer, and a Count Lorenzo had a massive library. Indeed, the possession of large libraries with many and beautiful manuscripts became a favored status symbol among the kings and the aristocracy of Visigothic Spain.
The highest point of Visigothic culture arrived with Isidore of Seville (560–636), brother of Leander, archbishop of Seville. Educated at the cathedral school that his brother established in the city, Isidore learned Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and in 599 he succeeded his brother as archbishop there. His subsequent career shows that he managed to combine the life of a scholar with that of a man of affairs. Active in the political life of the kingdom, he attended the Council of Toledo in 589 when his brother secured Reccared's conversion. He also presided over a general church council at Seville in 619 and at the national council of Toledo in 633. Isidore also produced his own monastic rule, which stressed an active life defined by hard work as well as piety.
In his cultural initiatives as archbishop, Isidore founded schools for children, seminaries for the education of clerics, and monasteries. He enlarged the already sizeable cathedral library at Seville and reorganized its scriptorium, insisting on accuracy, beauty, and excellence in the work of his copyists. Isidore also became a prolific writer, and history remembers him best for his literary efforts. As a historian, he wrote a History of the Goths, Vandals, and Suevi and a literary history, De viris illustribus (On Illustrious Men). His theological works included an Old Testament gloss and commentaries on various aspects of Christian dogma. His best work, without doubt, is his Etymologiae, written late in his life.
The Etymologies, its title in English, is an encyclopedic work in which Isidore first explained the philological basis of each term he included, and then proceeded to include all knowledge he could find relating to it. Wherever possible, he substituted Christian authorities for pagan ones. After Isidore's death in 636, his disciple Braulio organized the encyclopedia and divided it into twenty books. Books I and II deal with the Roman trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and logic) and Book III treats the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music). The other books cover an astonishing range of topics, from medicine, law, and kingship, to food, dress, and furniture, and everything in between.
In short, Isidore intended to compile an encyclopedia of all existing knowledge based on the sources available to him. For philosophy, he relied on Plato, Aristotle, and Seneca. For theology, he relied on Origen, Tertullian, Augustine, and Gregory the Great, and for grammar and rhetoric he used Cicero and Quintilian. For history, he summarized Sallust, Livy, Jerome, Orosius, and Hidacius, and for law he used Ulpian and the Theodosian code. Isidore also recorded works of the poets Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Lucan, and Lucretius. He based his architectural knowledge on Vitruvius, and he was familiar with the scientific works of Hesiod, Democritus, Pliny, Varro, and Columela. He also relied on the encyclopedic works of Boethius and Cassiodorus. Historians have often derided Isidore for his naive acceptance of his sources, and for his uncritical amassing of information. Despite that criticism, many of the classical writings that he collected would have been lost, had he not compiled them.
Isidore's Etymologiae became a crucial text for medieval education, and most well-equipped medieval libraries had a copy. The Venerable Bede knew Isidore's work in early eighth-century England. References to Isidore also abound in the writers of the Carolingian Renaissance in France. Until Vincent of Beauvais wrote his Speculum in the thirteenth century, the Etymologiae was the most easily available work covering so wide a range of topics. With the advent of printing in the fifteenth century, Isidore's work experienced a new period of popularity. Ten editions of the Etymologiae appeared in print between 1477 and 1577, and many other editions have appeared since then. In fact, the first complete English translation was published in 2006 – testimony to the enduring appeal and significance of this early encyclopedia.
The Visigothic kingdom of Spain exemplified an uneven blending of Germanic and Roman institutions and customs, but the continuities from Roman times are more significant than any changes made by the Visigoths. Partly that is due to the latter's small numbers – perhaps 100,000 Visigoths in a population of several million Hispano-Romans. Roman traditions were already entrenched in language, law, and religion before the Visigoths arrived, and that, too, helps to explain their dominance. The continuity is readily apparent in archeological investigations showing that material life hardly changed with the transition. Few Visigothic buildings survive, because medieval structures superseded them. Nonetheless, by 711 the Visigoths had created, from their own and their adopted customs, a monarchical state quite similar to other early kingdoms in Western Europe. What they might eventually have accomplished is unknowable, for the kingdom abruptly fell before the sweep of Islamic conquest.
The last Visigothic king of Spain was Roderick, elected in 710 by a group of nobles in defiance of the late King Witiza, who had hoped that his son Akhila would succeed him. After Roderick's election, Akhila withdrew to the northeast of the peninsula, raised the banner of civil war, and declared himself the ruler. There is some rather circumstantial evidence that some of Akhila's Visigothic supporters, along with a certain Julian (possibly the Byzantine exarch of Ceuta), encouraged the Muslims to attack Roderick and aided the invaders for a time. The records are incomplete, and later chroniclers preserved unverifiable legends and stories that developed over the years. Without doubt, however, Roderick faced divisions within the ruling class, in addition to the lingering disaffection of the Hispano-Roman subjects of the Visigothic monarchy.
In July 710, a reconnaissance force of 400 Muslims from North Africa crossed the strait and landed on the Iberian Peninsula at a place just west of Gibraltar. This initial foray, and the lack of resistance to their incursion, encouraged the Muslims to organize a large invasion force the following spring. Berber forces numbering 7,000 to 12,000 men, under the leadership of Ṭāriq ibn Ziyād, the governor of Tangier, crossed the strait and established a base camp at the foot of the Roman Mons Calpe, now renamed the hill of Ṭāriq, Gibraltar. Roderick hurried from the north with his army to meet the invaders, but it was too late. Roderick lost the battle and his life, and effective resistance to the Islamic invasion collapsed. The Visigothic kingdom, and with it Iberia's ancient history, had come to an abrupt end.
In the remains of fortification walls in Tarragona (Catalonia), the huge stones at the base are thought to date from the sixth century BCE. The middle courses date from the time of the Roman general Scipio (c. 200 BCE), and the top courses from the time of Caesar Augustus (late first century BCE).
The great aqueduct of Segovia is one of the most dramatic remnants of the Roman period in Spain.
The elaborate proscenium of the Roman theatre in Mérida (Extremadura), along the “silver road,” evokes the wealth and cultural sophistication of the province of Lusitania.
Besides bridges and aqueducts, roads were important Roman contributions to the economic infrastructure of Iberia. This road, in the Gredos range of the Central Mountains, is still used by transhumant livestock.
This crown, bearing the name of King Recceswinth (mid seventh century CE), represents the Christian identity of Visigothic Spain. Crafted of gold and adorned with precious stones, it was made to hang in church as a votive offering – in other words, in fulfillment of a sacred vow.
San Pedro de la Nave, c. 680–711 (Zamora), is one of the few churches that still retain their Visigothic character. When a dam-building project threatened its existence in 1930–2, it was moved, stone by stone, to its present site at El Campillo, at the insistence of a local architect.