Iberia Absorbs the Visigoths

Having stared at Italy now for a while—in an attempt at grasping what the phrase “Middle Ages” really means—it seems only right now to look to the west and to study Iberia. I use that word rather than Hispania, which was the Roman term, because I want to start with a truly great map of the Iberian Peninsula showing the region in pre-Roman times. The image, alas, is copyrighted, hence I can only point to it (link). It shows what is for me the bewildering variety of tribes that occupied the palce before Rome attempted to subjugate the region. After they had done so, we get the following map, taken from the time of Diocletian’s Tetrarchy, which extended from 293 to 313.

The northern border of Tarraconensis roughly represents the Pyrenees, a guarding barrier, you might say. Now what happened to this realm, beginning in 409 may be summarized thus:

Vandals and Suevi, both Germanic and originating in today’s northwestern Germany and Poland had settled in the yellow region, southern France, then called Aquitania. Another tribe, which had originated in what is now Russia between the Black Sea and the Caspian, the Alani, were settled there too. Elements of these three tribal groupings crossed the Pyrenees and settled the westernhalf of Iberia: Suevi and one Vandal complement in Gallacia, the Alani in Lusitania, another Vandal element in Boetica.

The map below shows the advance of the Alani—who, coming from just north of Persia, spoke a closely related language. Their path and that of the Vandals coincide after both leave Aquitania; the Alani, after suffering defeat by the Vandals in Iberia, become one tribal stream.

The next image shows the progress of the Visigoths. They’re late-comers to Spain but destined to be the victors for a goodly spell. Note the similarity of their path to the one followed by the Alans—and their arrival in Aquitanica some years after the Alans’ departure. This is the stream in which Alaric appears as the conqueror of Rome, triggering Augustine’s City of God. By the time the Visigoths reach France, Athaulf is king. It is to him that Emperor Honorius elevates to an imperial viceroyship and asks to make order in Hispania—in exchange for ruling it in Honorius’ name.

Elements of the Visigoth do indeed enter Spain and defeat the Alani in Lusitania (418). Their success leads to further mass migrations of Iberia, but the Visigoths continue, also more or less to rule Aquitanica under Honorius’ very distant sanction. Some 90 years later (507), the increasingly powerful Frankish realm, to the north of Aquitanica, makes itself felt as a war breaks out between Franks and Visigoth. The Visigoths then lose their holdings in Gaul and move en masse across the Pyrenees to Iberia, a land they more or less control.

The result of this conquest, at its peak, around 500 AD, is shown in the map to the left. Note here that, following the Frankish invasion of Aquitanica, the Visigothic capital is moved, from Toulouse, to Barcelona on the Mediterranean coast and then to Toledo. Note further that Visigothic rule fails to overcome the Suevi who, one might say, are founding Portugal. And note above all that white region on the north coast. You might have guessed why: the Basques have their home there. They were present before any earlier invasions—say by the Celts, then the Romans, and then the Vandals et al. They were a thorn in the hide of every invader, not least the last (for a while), the Visigoths; as we shall see. Note, finally, the name of the African region in yellow. The Vandals and the Alani have been expelled from Spain (but see notes below).

Three other highlights regarding this westernmost extent of the old Roman Imperium. Theodoric the Great, having conquered Italy, became very influential with the Visigoth by marrying his daughter Theodegotho to Alaric II. In the period 511-526, his grandson Amaliric ruled the Visigoths. The second point: The last Arian king of the Visigoths, until he converted to Catholicism in 587, was Reccared. With his conversion, and that of his followers, the last vestiges of religious tension between Roman Hispanics (if I may use that word) and Visigoths disappeared. Finally, the end. In 711 the Muslims invaded Spain from Africa. The king of the Visigoths then was the Roderic, an obscure and not very popular figure. He just happened to be campaigning far to the north at the time against—well, you guessed it. The Basques. And Iberia fell under Muslim rule. Spain was still under that rule when Middle Ages ended. Herewith a timeline of major events. The blue coloration indicates the portion that falls into the Middle Ages.

Some Notes:

Barbarian Invasions. The changing coloration of maps may give the wrong impressions that invading tribes completely displaced entire local populations. Not at all. Barbarian tribes were relatively small in size. When they conquered a region, they replaced the ruling classes from power and added their own dependents to the population. When they differed in religion, e.g. the Vandals and Visigoths both being Arians, this was a handicap for them in ruling regions still thickly populated with Catholics. Vandals and Visigoths were admired—we have one Catholic bishop’s words for that—for their chastity, piety—but tensions still remained. Therefore the conversion of Reccared (not a big name in history) was very significant in Spain. The last tension between rulers and ruled vanished. You might say that under the Visigoths Iberia had two competing souls, each represented by a religion (see my last note). With Reccared converted, one soul remained.

Vandals and Alans. The maps, again, may say too much or too little. Some elements of both tribes remained in Spain—and their descendants are still there. Organized tribal elements emigrated to Africa.

Civilizations as Embodiments of an Idea. When looking at the death of one (Roman) and the birth of another (Christian) civilization, the thought occurs that civilizations, however physical in manifestation, are really something more transcending. They are a collective consciousness, a kind of soul, something that gives a body its meaning and unity. The flesh of that body are the populations that share this common soul. The bones of it are geographical structures like Iberia and Italy; its circulation are the rivers. At the more physical level, the antibodies and immune systems of such abstract structures are centrally-controlled military and police forces. While they perform effectively, governed from a single point, they protect the body. But when this protection fails, bacteria and viruses of another sort are able to invade. Of another sort? Yes. These aliens can interbreed with the cells that form the flesh of the body they invade. And once order is established, they can, therefore, be reabsorbed to form a new body when a new soul arises once more to create more permanent living societies. All those invasions? Reaching in from the Far East and the Far North? Infections. The Roman body had become disordered; the antibodies lost the battle because the center no longer held; and with that even that abstract something, the soul, began to disappear. Later, when things settled down, a new soul, already present and waiting, took over once again and created the new civilization of Christendom.

----------------

Image credits: Diocletian’s Hispania: Wikipedia (link); Alani migrations: Wikipedia (link); Visigothic migration: Wikipedia (link); Visigothic Kingdom in 500: Wikipedia (link).

Posts in this series: first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth.

Augustine and the Visigoths and Vandals

[Second in a series on the Middle Ages. The first is here.]

If the Middle Ages saw the victory of barbarism and the triumph of Christianity, then alongside Attila the Hun (406-453), who gave energy to barbarian conquests and migrations, another figure who just predates that era, and shaped Christianity, was Saint Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo (354-430).

You might say that Augustine, like Attila, came from the fringe of the Roman world. He was born in Africa—or, more precisely the Roman Province called Africa. I show that region in the inset map. Today it comprises, moving west to east, northern Algeria, Tunisia, and a strip of coastal Libya. Rome had acquired that province by the conquest of Carthage. The little red tip on this map pointing to Italy marks the Gulf of Tunis, and Carthage was located on its shore. Augustine came from a small town to the west of Carthage, called Thagasta in those days, today called Souk Ahras. And—after his you might say academic career ended—which took him to Carthage, then Rome, and finally to Milan, he returned to Africa again and settled in Hippo, now called Annaba and, these days, a city with a population of 257,000.

The next map shows these places, with Google’s A marking Tunis (Carthage). The distances here are 59 miles (by modern road) from Thagasta to Hippo and 189 miles from Hippo to Carthage. Augustine went to what we’d now call boarding school at 11 to a place just south-west of Thagasta then called Madaurus (today M’ Daourouch) some 57 miles from Thagasta (not shown on the map). His African region, therefore, was just about the same as the distance from Chicago to Detroit.

The first image I am showing next is a residential area of Souk Ahras (Thagasta) today, taken from Google Maps. That city, today, has a population of 157,000 people, and it has all sorts of very impressive structures and lots of cars, but here we see, polka-dotting the area, the white of many, many satellite dishes. The second image is of a more urban view. Some things remain the same; others change…

Augustine’s life divides into three  unequal parts. Until he was 30 he followed the path of an academic in those days; he took his pHD, in modern terms, in Carthage. Next he taught school at home briefly but returned to Carthage to found a School of Rhetoric, rhetoric being, then the route into public life, as law is today. He spent eight years there before, dissatisfied with the general quality of pupils, he went off to Rome, but his second school there did not survive its first year: Roman students did not pay their tuition. Through contacts acquired from his then Manichean friends, he managed to get a job as a Professor of Rhetoric at the court in Milan, a city that, in his day—and for the next eighteen—was the Capital of the Western Roman Empire. The capital moved about in those days. In 402, when Augustine was already in Hippo, it was moved to Ravenna—a capital Attila tried but failed to take in his last campaign. Both men, you might say, at least touched the center of the Western Empire.

The period from 385 to 390 represents Augustine’s conversion to Christianity.  He was born into a Christian household but, during his studies in Carthage, he had been strongly attracted to Manichaeism, best described as a late-blooming offshoot of Mazdaism, characterized by a radical dualism: two forces in the cosmos, Good and Evil, battling for supremacy. Manichaeism made claims to be more rationally founded—and supported by experience—which was most likely what drew Augustine; but in practice the followers of Mani exhibited ambiguous moral behavior which began early to cause Augustine second thoughts. His Manichean connections, however, were useful in furthering his early academic ambitions.

Augustine returned to Africa in 388 and, three years later was ordained a priest. His preaching tours in his region rapidly earned him a high reputation so that in 395 he became the Bishop at Hippo. The last thirty-seven years of his life he spent as a Churchman, growing in reputation by means of his books—the most important of which was his Confessions, completed in 397.

Augustine’s contact with the barbarian phenomenon of his time came as he neared, and then reached, the end of his life. In 410 Alaric, whose career began by invading Greece (where he accepted the capitulation of Athens), took Rome and emptied it of anything worth carrying. The loss of life there was modest—despite the fact that this last and this time successful of several Visigothic attempts at taking Rome had in part been triggered by a Roman massacre of some 30,000 Gothic dependents (wives and children). This by way of giving a flavor of those times.

The capital, by then, was Ravenna, but Alaric’s triumph had a major and very depressing impact on the Western Roman world. Augustine was then inspired to write his second most famous book, The City of God. It was a major and successful expression of Christ’s words: “My Kingdom is not of this world.” It refocused the mindset of his time. The Empire might be doomed, but the City of God would ultimately triumph.

In the last year of Augustine’s life, the Vandals, who had passed through Spain but had had major trouble establishing themselves there, moved in a body (approximately 200,000 strong) into Africa and arrived at the gates of Hippo in 430. Augustine was already ill. The siege lasted and—just after Augustine died—was lifted again. The Vandals came back later; this time they succeeded in capturing the city and burning it down. The only structure they saved was Augustine’s church and his library. Was that, perhaps, an omen about the future?