Visigoths in Spain.

The Visigoths: Arrival in Spain.

The Visigoths were one of several migratory Germanic or Gothic tribes, whom the Greeks and Romans identified as “barbarians,” i.e. “different” and culturally unsophisticated (however, this did not prevent the Romans from making pacts with them or incorporating them in their imperial armies).

The disapproval has stuck to “Gothic” throughout the years.
“Gothic” cathedrals --ironically built hundreds of years after the
demise of the Goths-- were so described during the Renaissance
as a measure of scorn (compared to classical elegance); the
“Gothic” novel carries with it images of decay and decadence.
And nowadays the Oxford and Webster dictionaries include
definitions of “Gothic” as “barbarous,” “uncouth,” “rude.”

The Gothic invasion of France, Italy and Spain was facilitated by the enfeebled state of the Roman Empire, which gradually fell inward upon itself like a deflated balloon. The invasion of Hispania (as the Iberian peninsula was then known, and that included Portugal), however, was not a single event carried out by a unified group, but a series of migrations effected by different tribes --Sueves, Vandals, Alani, Visigoths etc. The Sueves, Vandals and Alani crossed the Pyrenees in 409, the Sueves establishing themselves in themselves in the north west, the Vandals in the south and the Alani in Lusitania. In 416, Visigoth soldiers arrived, having been contracted as allies by the Romans to reimpose Roman authority on the earlier Germanic invaders. In 418, the soldiers were recalled to the south of France, where the Visigoths had by now established their capital in Toulouse. However, by this time Roman authority over the Visigoths was tenuous. The Visigoths had already sacked the imperial city in 410 and their westward expansion into southern France and eventually into Hispania was an emigrating process over which Rome really had little say.

Although they controlled much of the peninsula from Toulouse at first, and continued sorties into Hispania (e.g. they pushed the Vandals into Africa in 429), the Visigoths finally moved en masse through the Pyrenees early in the 6th century. The decision was prompted by a series of defeats and the death of their king, Alaric II (r 484-507) at the hands of the Franks from the north. (The issue between Franks and Visigoths came to a head when the king of the Franks, Clodoveo/ Clovis (r 481-511), converted to Catholicism. His quarrel with Alaric had a decided religious overtone directed against the Arian beliefs of Alaric and his followers).

From the beginning of the 6th century to the early years of the 8th, the Visigoths dominated the peninsula, although their control of the peninsula was frequently put to the test over the first 100 years or so. The Vascones (Basques) in the north were always a thorn, and the Sueves to the north west kept up opposition. In addition, the establishment by Rome's eastern offspring, Byzantine Constantinople, of an enclave in the south east of the peninsula --approximately the mid 500s-- also threatened Visigothic resolve. The Sueves were finally conquered during the reign of the redoubtable Leovigild (r. 568-586), and the Byzantine threat was terminated in the 620s.

Visigothic Spain at the death of Leovigild (586). The green
shows what was left of the Byzantine empire until the 620s.
North of Victoriacum, the Basques were also undefeated by
the Visigoths. Click to enlarge.

Except for the Basque region, then, the peninsula was nominally united from within as a nation under one ruler for the first time. Under Rome it had been no more than a province, and ruled from without; with the Visigoths it took the first significant step to self-identity.

The Visigothic Paradox

For many people the Visigothic contribution to Hispanic civilisation seems inexistent or at best marginal. The contributions of the “Invisigoths” (as they have succinctly been called, see http://www.gadling.com/2010/12/31/the-visigoths-spains-forgotten-conquerors/) suffer badly, wedged as they are between great legacies of the Romans and the Moors. Indeed, the “significance” of the Visigoths might be defined paradoxically by what they did not do. They left little art --some gold and silver work, including some striking votive crowns, figurative carvings), and no individual pieces of sculpture.

Votive Crown in
the Archeological
Museum, Madrid.
Found at Guarrazar
near Toledo in 1849.

There are no towns that identify their culture in a substantial way. Not even Toledo, their capital from the middle of the 6th century, can claim any significant extant Visigothic features (the church of San Román in Toledo houses a very modest Visigothic museum: e.g. reproductions of some crowns –the originals are in the Archeological Museum in Madrid-- some brooches and sundry ornaments).

San Pedro de la Nave. Click to enlarge.

What is left are some rural churches in the north (e.g. San Juan de Baños de Cerrato in Palencia, Santa Comba de Bande in Orense, San Pedro de la Nave near Zamora, Quintanilla de las Vias between Burgos and Soria) and some striking artifacts related to the church in Mérida, Toledo and Córdoba: pillars, decorated altar pieces and fonts, stones with “Maltese” crosses etc.

There is, perhaps surprisingly, a certain Byzantine quality to the decorative forms (e.g. vegetal motifs --grapes, leaves, plants-- peacocks, geometric patterns), but we should remember that the Visigoths had had close contact with the east on their journey west.

San Pedro de la Nave. Carving of the sacrifice
of Isaac and vegetal and animal motifs.
Click to enlarge.

That is when they adopted Arianism, a deviant Christine doctrine that denied the Trinity, espoused by the Greek-born theologian, Arius. From the east too could have come a major contribution to Hispanic architecture, the horseshoe arch, although ironically this is frequently credited to the Moors. The most striking example can be found in the church of San Juan de Baños.

Visigothic arches in San Juan de Baños.
Click to enlarge.

The Visigoths left little linguistic evidence of their presence. There exist no literary works or written documents --even of a legal or ecclesiastical nature-- in the Visigothic tongue. It is not that the Visigothic period was devoid of culture; on the contrary 7th-century writing in Hispania was one of the richest in Europe, and even if it was produced mainly by writers of Hispano-Roman origin (e.g. St Isidore), the Visigoths evidently did not or could not discourage it. The point is that authors chose to express themselves in the written/ literary language that bound most of Europe at that time: Latin.

What we do have left of Visigothic linguistic influence is lexical rather than syntactic and limited mostly to proper names (e.g. Alfonso, Rodrigo, Fernando, Gonzalo, Guzmán), and words associated with war: guerra, yelmo ("helmet"), espuela ("spur"), estribo ("stirrup"), heraldo ("herald"), tregua ("truce").

Given this lack of substantial Visigothic presence in Spain, can we ignore the Visigoths? No, for three reasons, each elevating the myth of the Visigoths in Spain's history:
1) For many historians, especially those supporting the centralist views of Castile, the Visigoths are viewed as nation builders because they were the first to create a united and independent kingdom in the Iberian Peninsula. According to the Jesuit church historian, Z García Villada (1876-1936), Spain as a nation was born politically in 573 during the reign of Leovigild (r. 568-86), and spiritually when Leovigild's son, Reccared (r. 586-601) converted from Arianism to Catholicism in 587 and declared his country officially Catholic in 589. He could have added, too, that in 654 the political and spiritual dimensions of Spanish nationalism were underpinned by a unified legislative system. Known as the Lex Visigothorum (Law of the Visigoths) or Liber Iudiciorum (Book of the Judges), it brought together earlier Visigothic customary laws and traditions and Roman legal principles, and remained in use in Christian territory until the 13th century (i.e. during the years of al-Andalus, when much of the Peninsula was under Muslim rule). So, with these basic structural requirements for nationhood Iberia/Hispania was politically, religiously and legislatively united as early as the 6th century. This combination of unity, law and order under a benevolent church appealed strongly to General Franco, Spanish dictator from 1939 to 1975, who praised the Visigoths for endowing Spaniards with these qualities when he opened the Visigothic Museum in Toledo in 1969.

Not everyone sees the Visigoths in such a positive light, however. One of Spain’s best known philosophers, José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955), dismissed them as a decadent, drunken and “Romanised” tribe lurching its way through Hispania, and compared them unfavourably with another Germanic group, the Franks, founders of France. In 1948, the influential literary critic, philologist and historian, Américo Castro (1885-1972), rejected the very idea that the Visigoths were Spanish, arguing that Spain or “Spanishness” was really a product of the eight centuries of “convivencia” (“getting along together”) of Christians, Moors and Jews. This produced a heated riposte from another historian, Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz , for whom the fundamental elements of “Spanishness” preceded the Moors. It survived the presence of the Jews and Moors and regained its eminence following the expulsion of these alien cultures.

2) The Visigothic spirit was frequently evoked following the Moorish invasion, when the concept of the "godo" as the receptacle of untainted Hispanic virtues was recalled with pride in the struggle against the infidel. Praise of the Visigoths started with the Hispano-Roman writer, the famous St Isidore of Seville (560?-636), whose writings enjoyed great popularity in the Middle Ages. Since the Visigoths had declared Hispania officially Catholic by the time he was writing, Isidore’s eulogy reflected his gratitude for the protection and support the Church now enjoyed under Visigothic rule. Much of Isidore’s Historia Gothorum (History of the Goths) was incorporated into Rodrigo Jiménez de Andrada’s 13th-century Historia Gothica, a glowing tribute to the Visigothic period. In the 13th century, too, the aura of Visigothic qualities led Alfonso X, the Learned, to exalt Visigothic nobility, religious devotion and greatness in legendary terms. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the expression "Es de los godos" (“he descends from the Goths”) was used to identify anyone who claimed a lineage that could be traced back to the purity of pre-Moorish days. At the same time, the celebrated Spanish surname "Guzmán," from the German "gouds man" ("good man"), was the one most commonly appropriated by those who wished to claim an illustrious heritage. Verification of such claims freed an individual of the worst social stigma possible, the accusation of being of Jewish or Moorish descent, i.e. of being a converso or morisco. The obsession with purity of blood (limpieza de sangre) cannot be underestimated during this period, it infected all social levels and became a major theme in literary works.

3) It has been claimed that large numbers of Visigothic nobles fled to the Asturian mountains following defeat by the Moors in 711, and from there they were instrumental in spearheading resistance to the newcomers. Much of this is conjectural, elaborated by later historiographers, but it has passed to modern days. Add to this the centralist argument that it was here where the Reconquista began, and it was here where Castile was born, and it was Castile “that made Spain,"** and we have good reasons not to dismiss the Visigoths.

** An assertion made by Ortega y Gasset.
He also added that Castile had "unmade Spain."

Like the Celts and Iberians, the Visigoths have cast a longer shadow over Spain's history than might be expected; it's one that is not likely to go away easily.

Sources:

Barton, Simon in “The Roots of the National Question in Spain,” in The National Question in Europe in Historical Context eds. Mikulas Teich and Roy Porter Cambridge: 1993 (pp. 106-127). (Well argued article and well worth looking for.)
Carr, Raymond ed. Spain: A History Oxford 2000
Collins, Roger Early Medieval Spain: Unity in Diversity, 400-1000 London: MacMillan 1983
Collins, Roger Visigothic Spain 409-711 Oxford 2004
Phillips, William D, Jr. & Phillips Carla R A Concise History of Spain Cambridge 2010
Bernard Reilly The Medieval Spains Cambridge 1993
E.A. Thompson, The Goths in Spain Oxford: Clarendon 1969