Twilight of the Goths: The Kingdom of Toledo, c. 565-711

1

INTRODUCTION

When Luis Díez del Corral wrote his Rape of Europe in 1954, he asked: Who were these Visigoths who failed our Europe so abjectly? Were they already Spaniards?¹ The question comes in a chapter headed ‘Europe seen from Spain’, under two quotations, one from Camões: ‘Behold here comes noble Spain like the head of all Europe’, and the other from Cervantes: ‘Enough, said Don Quixote to himself, it would be preaching in the wilderness to seek to induce this rabble by requests to undertake any deed of valour… God help us, but this whole world is naught but schemes and devices all working at cross-purposes.’²

In European terms, this begs other questions: Were there already Spaniards in the sixth century? Were those Visigoths who sacked Rome in 410 and abjectly lost Spain to the Muslims in 711 the people, who emerged as barbarians from what is now TransDanubian Romania, also the same people as those who were idealized in fifteenth century Spain as the very pattern and mould of Castilian nobility and chivalry? Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis. Change, politicians often say, is to be welcomed: they are in a position to profit by its favours and soften its reverses. Many Romans were inclined to seek the Golden Age in the remote past, as did Don Quixote in addressing his audience of shepherds: he hoped, with divine aid, to restore it.

Divergent and opposing perceptions of the Visigoths still exist. For those who follow the destinies of the Roman world they are unquestionably barbarian intruders. But Germanists may consider the Visigoths almost as renegades, detached from the northern world.³ The difference is largely accounted for by the fact that remains of the German world are mainly physical, while Romanism survives as an intellectual force. As St Isidore, the great figure of the seventh century, foresaw, the future lay in the fusion of Roman culture with Gothic strength. The great champion of the Roman tradition could not have foretold the disaster that followed two generations after his death.

Those who follow the Roman tradition tend to seek the special nature of the Visigoths in their remote barbarian past. Yet they rarely dissent from the view that there is little trace left of the Visigothic presence in the territories they once possessed.⁴ It is therefore necessary to temper the search for some essential clue to the Visigoths by emphasizing the influence on them of their prolonged contact with Rome, and particularly their service in the Roman army whose habits and outlook they adopted, not to mention that of the wives, Romanized or not, they acquired in the course of their wanderings, which led them to the Spains, where they founded their kingdom of Toledo. With this in mind, we may start with the later Roman world, on which they impinged with such devastating if transitory effect.

The Romans came into direct contact with the Visigoths in the time of Constantine I, who crossed the lower Danube into Transylvania and contracted some Visigoths to serve in his Eastern army. At that time most of the Spains had been subdued, the east and south for nearly half a millennium, and presented no danger to the empire. The eastern seaboard had been taken over as a protectorate from the Greeks, who gave it the name of Iberia, related to the great River Ebro. The south had been conquered after the defeat of Hannibal in the Second Punic War. The Phoenicians were traders rather than colonists, but their heirs the Carthaginians had at a late stage set up an empire, of which Cartagena, or New Carthage, serves as a memorial. Its main source of wealth had been the native kingdom of Tartessos which controlled the valley of the Baetis, now the Guadalquivir, or Great River by antonomasia. The Romans picked up the names Span and Hispania, which have given Spain and Hispalis, Seville. They continued to distinguish Nearer Spain, or Hither Spain, Citerior, from Hispania Ulterior, Further Spain, what lay beyond. Much of the interior remained unsubdued, if not unvisited, until the last native hero Viriatus was killed by treachery in 136 BC; his Latin name alludes to the Celtic bangles or circlets, viriae, he wore. Roman forces then soon reduced the hill-top settlements of the north-west, leaving only the north coast as the still-militarized frontier or limes.

The process of Romanization began from the south and proceeded up the western side, though less rapidly on the high tableland of the centre, the dry meseta, less amenable to agriculture and more sparsely populated. The Iberian Peninsula was still the Spains, Hispaniae in the plural. They were held together by marchable roads, bridges and posting-houses constructed under the supervision of Roman surveyors and military engineers. Cities and towns copied Roman architecture and institutions and their leaders prized themselves on their Latinity. The south was already accustomed to domination from beyond the seas and acquired Roman dress, language and habits almost everywhere. The Romans favoured flat and arable land and open settlements, so that the fortified hill-tops were either abandoned or greatly modified. In Baetica men wore the toga and went unarmed as in Rome itself. Elsewhere the Roman superstructure overwhelmed the variety of indigenous communities.

The division into Citerior and Ulterior was replaced by the creation of provinces. Baetica was peaceable and senatorial, with Seville as the usual seat of the civil administration. The once-Greek east was almost as Roman, but took its name of Tarraconensis from Tarraco, Tarragona, a stronghold and port which served as the point of entry for troops and supplies sent to man the northern frontier, for which a single legion usually sufficed. The Emperor Augustus had subdued the mountaineers of the Asturias and Cantabria and rewarded his veterans, emeriti, with grants of land about Emeritensis, Mérida, which became the centre of the vast province of Lusitania, a name chosen to recall the scene of Rome’s earliest successes in dominating Ulterior: it had become the most Roman city in the west, endowed with numerous monuments. The large and straggling area between Cartagena and Toledo on the Tagus was known as Cartaginensis, preserving the name of Carthage. The fifth and last province to be constituted was Gallaecia, the north-west, formed by the Antonines early in the third century: its inhabitants kept their tribal conventions, since it was made up of the three conventus, or local administrative centres, the Braccarenses, with their capital at Braga; the Lucenses, governed from Lucus, Lugo, and the Astures, who obeyed the governor of Asturica, or Astorga: the first two were mainly Celtic, but Braga, emanating from one or more Roman villae or estates, was the more Roman and acquired primacy as the seat of the Roman church. Lugo still retains its unique circuit of Roman walls, while Astorga had few monuments, being mainly a centre for recruiting men, horses and supplies from the Asturian mountains. Since the time of the Emperor Galba the seat of the Seventh Legion had been at Leon, to which it gave its name. The military had their own agger or separate land and peasantry. In the course of time, the Legion was gradually Hispanized and various units were sent for periods of service in different parts of the empire, contributing to the spread of military institutions, customs and speech as effectively as Roman or Latin culture. With the exception of one far-ranging incursion by barbarians from the north, the Spains became almost a haven of tranquillity in the third century. The many troubles of the empire were attributed to the rivalries of ambitious governors of large and well-armed provinces who became usurpers or tyrants in their attempts to seize power. The Spains remained quiet and passive. Baetica was sufficiently defended by the Mediterranean Sea: the southern limes was far away in Africa beyond Volubilis, and Tingitana or Tangier was formed into a separate province and attached to the Spains as a kind of buffer or safety-cushion. The surplus of agricultural produce in the south was applied to the needs of Rome itself as the City outgrew its more immediate resources.

The need for radical reform was perhaps less evident then than it seems today. The senate consisted of a few extremely rich families with possessions in many provinces and was too obsessed with self-preservation of its privileged position to risk intervening: suffice it that the City was eternal. The Emperor Diocletian was powerful enough to seek a solution in dynasticism. To prevent strong governors from attempting to seize power, he divided the larger provinces, doubling the total number: this did not affect the Spains. He split the empire into two Parts, each with its own army, its own Augustus and Caesar. Either Part might rally to the aid of the other, but they should never fall out between themselves, the two imperial families being bound into a single dynasty by marriage alliances. One law, one language and one coinage would further assure unity.

However sound in theory, the arrangement did not last. The family does not guarantee perfect peace, nor equal ability. When the senior Augustus disappears, the junior takes his place: which Caesar then becomes junior Augustus? Powerful governors were indeed cut down to size, but power was concentrated in the imperial families, who were even more amibitious since the prize was greater and nearer to them. The consulship became a reward conferred by the emperor, and the senate continued to enjoy its splendid impotence.

2

LATE ROMANS AND EARLY GOTHS

The long reign of the Emperor Constantine I saw the incorporation of some Visigoths as a minor part of the Eastern army. It also brought into play the dormant force of religion. The emperor as Pontifex Maximus was the head of the Roman cult, himself divinized after his death with a promise of immortality. He was the subject and ally of Jupiter, and his armies fought under the sign of Jupiter, the Best, the Greatest, Iupiter Optimus Maximus. Emperors had risen and fallen so often that the belief wore thin. The senate, educated in all the complexity of mythology, burnt incense to the statue of Victory. The other divinities of the pantheon had dwindled into shadows of themselves. Laws, walls, regalia and other trappings remained sacred. So long as they did not trespass, other cults and psychopomps were permitted, subject to local conditions.

All this was called into question by the spread of Christianity. It had begun three centuries earlier, when its Founder was crucified at the behest of his supposed peers with the consent of a Roman governor of no exalted standing. His teaching had been oral but the message was carried in person or by letter far and wide by a small band of enthusiasts, many of whom had fared as cruelly as he. His promise was of a kingdom not of this world, and many previous emperors had opposed it, some violently. Despite its alien origin its cosmogony corresponded to that described by Vergil in Book VI of the Aeneid. It accepted the secular terrestrial divisions established by the Roman empire, both present and future.

Constantine I accepted it and attributed military success to it. He united the empire while retaining the two Parts, and founded a new capital for the Eastern Part at Byzantium, renamed Constantinople, which was Christian, officially at least, from the start. The Eastern Part had its own senate, but was more mercantile and variegated, following the modes of Greek philosophy, while the west was poorer in worldly wealth, less inclined to speculate and more intent on the use of force to assert discipline. The East, as the first apostles knew, was more concerned with speculation about the divine nature. Christianity had reached the Spains from merchants or soldiers serving in the imperial armies. It was an urban religion, and traders established it in the cities, where also the Roman grip was strongest. Many Hispanic cities came to have their own martyrs who became patrons of churches and basilicas. The Spains had not produced tyrants or usurpers and did not now produce heretics. Constantine’s toleration and conversion was accompanied by the celebration of the first council of the Spanish church at Iliberri, Granada, at which nineteen bishops and twenty-four priests, drawn also from other provinces, adopted canons or rules by which Christians must abide and distinguish themselves from others. By contrast, the East was more concerned to find terms to define what was divine, reaching a consensus at Nicaea in 325. Its creed did not satisfy everyone or put an end to controversy: dissentients were branded heretics or ‘choosers’. Within the bosom of the church, many sought to renounce the world and seek the good life as hermits or monks: there came to be hundreds of monastic communities scattered from Asia Minor to Egypt, who obeyed each their own abbot, or abba, which those in the West might see as a defiance of the authority of the bishop, who obeyed their own leader, the bishop of Rome, later called pope.

The debate about the Founder had shifted from his message to his credentials. He was a man, but also the only son of God and therefore different from men. Among those who sought a simple and logical solution was Arius, a priest of Alexandria, whose arguments many churchmen found convincing. In the east there was much discussion of Arius’s ideas: not all bishops were willing to condemn him as a heretic. Constantine’s first concern was the restored unity of his empire: a strong Spanish bishop Hosius of Cordova, advised Constantine that strict orthodoxy was preferable to a broad church. Most of his subjects were still not Christians of either sort. The death of Arius did not diminish the influence of his teaching: rather the contrary, since he could no longer be questioned. But that of the emperor was the prelude to a new round of disorders. The empire was divided between his three sons, of whom the third, Constantius, favoured Arianism. He was also the longest-lived and came near to restoring the unity of the empire with the consequent acceptance of Arianism, itself professed by various groups. It was under this dispensation that some of the Visigoths who continued to serve in the Eastern army began to accept Christianity in its Arian variant. For barbarians this came to have a significant advantage in that it rendered them independent from the bishop of Rome and allowed them to appoint their own episcopacy who imposed their beliefs on the rest of the clergy. But as yet very few Goths were touched. They remained illiterate, though they remembered their own heroes: it is therefore not possible to say if they remembered that their ancestors had been the first barbarians to slay a Roman emperor in battle: this was Decius in August 250.

Constantius attempted to assert himself by violence. This was exercised against members of the imperial family descended from the first Christian emperor including those related by marriage. Constantius had elevated Gallus as his Caesar, but Gallus did not last long and was survived by his younger brother Julian, who was educated in Athens and took to the study of religion and philosophy. He also proved a successful soldier and having paved the way to the empire for himself, declared himself in favour of the traditional religion of the Romans of old. His erratic course earned for him the epithet of ‘the apostate’. Emperors who were also philosophers had become almost unknown since the days of Marcus Aurelius. But Julian imposed himself as a military commander, and on his early death on campaign, the choice of emperors reverted to the clique of generals, who formed the high command and especially the imperial guard. Military power came first, and dynasticism and religious conviction were subordinate to it.

Helmet of a Gothic leader, 4th-5th c., from Ciumesti, Romania.

3

THE AGE OF ALARIC

Who then were these Goths who were to sack Rome, put an end to its glory and form their own empire in the western prefecture? According to myth, they were a Germanic people sprung from Scandinavia who had crossed the Baltic and landed with the Gepids on the East German or Polish shore. They pushed their way south and east to the Carpathians and divided; one body, the Visigoths, entered Dacia, while others resorted to the steppes of the Ukraine and the Crimea, where they were known as Greutings or Ostrogoths.

They were certainly Germanic and neither nomads nor navigators, but peasant-farmers, and had absorbed other peoples on whom they imposed their command and language. The Dacio-Getae had some contact with a Romanized population, and their use of wagons implies a knowledge of woodcraft, and that of skins or pelts of hunting and sheep-raising. The archaeology of Romania made important finds between 1950 and 1970, and shows the complexity of races that had inhabited or passed through Transylvania.⁵ In 1830, the treasure of Pietroasa was uncovered in the midst of Gothic territory, and was thought significant enough to be exhibited in London. It comprised an array of vessels, fibulae and ear-rings of gold, often inlaid with coloured glass or stones, of a workmanship comparable to the treasure of Tartessos found at Carambolo near Seville in 1959. It was then