Leovigildo
Flavio Leovigildo (Latin: Flavius Leovigildus, from Gothic: Liubagilds; ¿?-Toledo, spring of the year 586) was king of the Visigoths from 568 or 569 to 586. Due to his reforms and his work of expansion and territorial reorganization, Leovigildo is considered the most important Visigothic king and one of the most admired sovereigns in the entire history of Spain. He was the author of the Codex Revisus or Code of Leovigildo, legislation that equated the rights of Goths and Hispano-Romans in his kingdom, both ethnic groups forming the same people, being Goth his adjective and Hispano-Roman his culture. After his military campaigns, his authority covered practically the entire Iberian Peninsula.
Historical sources
Leovigildo is the only Gothic king whose reign appears in the two most important Hispano-Gothic chronicles: the Historia de los Godos by San Isidoro, which dates back no more than the year 626, and the Crónica by Juan de Biclaro, which deals with the period between 567 and 591. This fact attests to the importance that posterity has given to this monarch. Unfortunately, they are two very brief and limited sources, since all the information provided by the historiography of that time is always very scarce. Added to this is another problem, and that is that Leovigildo's work has not left his own sources. The code he promulgated has not been preserved and can only be reconstructed from later texts, such as the Liber iudiciorum, promulgated in 654. The use of other sources, such as the History of the Franks by Gregorio de Tours doesn't help much either.
Family
Spanish genealogy traditionally considered him the son of Amalric, the genealogist Luis de Salazar y Castro was one of the scholars who defended such filiation. It has also been proposed that he was the son of Liuveric, count in 523 and 526. He shared the throne, or was associated with it, with his brother Liuva I, from the time he was proclaimed king until he died in 572. Leovigild married twice: the name of his first wife is unknown, but possibly she was a member from the Visigothic aristocracy and not so much from a Hispano-Roman family, Teodora or Teodosia, daughter of Severiano or Severino, Doge of Cartagena, and his wife Teodora or Túrtura, who was the sister of San Isidoro de Sevilla, of San Leandro de Sevilla, of Saint Fulgencio of Écija and Saint Florentina of Cartagena; At the time, mixed marriages were prohibited, from whom he had his children Hermenegildo and Recaredo I; his second wife was Gosvinta, the widow of Atanagildo.
Background
In order to fully appreciate the highly praised work of Leovigildo, it is essential to know the disastrous previous situation of the Visigothic kingdom. Some historians have even said that the years from the assassination of King Teudiselo in 549 to the enthronement of Leovogildo in 569 "are the most confusing and critical of the Visigothic domination in Spain". During the reign of Teudiselo's successor, Agila I (549-555), a serious crisis broke out when the city of Córdoba rebelled against the Crown, although the rebellion may have come from before. The reasons for this rebellion are not clear, but they surely have to do with the effective independence to which the local aristocracy was accustomed, the result of the combination of a very weak Visigothic presence in the area and the persistence of the region's Roman roots. of the Betica Instead, the consequences of this crisis are clearer: in 550 the king suffered a humiliating defeat in which he lost many soldiers and a son. In addition, the rebels seized the Royal Treasury from him, which was a lethal blow, as without the Treasury, Agila lost his main source of funding and much of his legitimacy as king. The defeated monarch took refuge in Mérida while several aristocrats proclaimed Atanagildo king.
Then began a four-year civil war (551-555), in which the Byzantine Empire's support for Atanagildo was decisive. This power did not hesitate to intervene to help its ally to annex the Gothic kingdom and thus fulfill Emperor Justinian I's project to rebuild the Western Roman Empire (in fact, they had already seized the Balearic Islands from the Vandals). Fortunately for the Gothic kingdom, the Byzantines no longer had the strength to undertake a similar campaign after many years of war (they were waging another in Italy against the Ostrogoths), so their actions were limited to balancing the forces of Atanagildo at the of Agila, and the compensation they claimed was reduced to the occupation of a coastal strip from the Guadalete river to the height of Denia that received the name of the province of Spania. There they would remain for three quarters of a century. But this set a dangerous precedent, which in 711 would lead the Gothic kingdom to its destruction at the hands of a foreign power that also claimed to be acting in aid of one Visigothic faction against another.
After Agila's confused assassination by his supporters in 555, Atanagild was left as sole king. But his mandate was weighed down by the events of previous years: Córdoba maintained its independence from the new king, in other regions the authority of the Gothic State also vanished and the Byzantines remained in the territory they had occupied. In addition, the loss of the Royal Treasury by Agila decisively weighed down the action of the State. However, Atanagildo was able to reign until his death from natural causes in 567, something exceptional that had not happened since 484 (the four previous kings had been assassinated).
At his death, a period of five months opened in which the throne became vacant. This power vacuum, although ephemeral, was also exceptional, since they always tried to have a designated heir in case the king died suddenly. The reason was that, since the sovereign was practically the only cohesive element that kept the monarchy standing, his disappearance could be very dangerous, since the longer a strong king recognized by all was missing, the greater the risk of chaos. and internal decomposition. Not much is known about this interregnum, except that it ended at the end of that year 567 with the election of Liuva I, who was apparently governor (dux) of Septimania and was proclaimed by the local nobles. Probably, these sought to end as soon as possible with the power vacuum that made them vulnerable to their Frankish neighbors. To reinforce his position, a year after his proclamation Liuva named an heir associating him to the throne: his brother Leovigildo. The latter, for his part, married Atanagildo's widow, Gosvinta, in a skilful political maneuver that sought to attract the deceased's noble-military clientele networks (for reasons like this, with the passage of time, widows would be prohibited from royals to marry again, a measure imitated later by the kingdom of Asturias).
From that moment (569) the two brothers reigned jointly with equal rights. In fact, San Isidoro says that of the two Leovigildo was the most preeminent monarch from the beginning, since it was agreed that he would reign in the Iberian Peninsula and Liuva would remain in the Septimania. According to some authors, this distribution responded to a compromise formula between the Visigothic aristocracy of the peninsula and the North Pyrenean aristocracy that had proclaimed Liuva. From that moment on, Liuva was eclipsed to the point that there is no further news of him until his death in 572. Therefore, this last date must be ruled out as the beginning of Leovigild's reign, with 569 being more accurate.
The military successes of the reign of Leovigildo
Restoration and territorial expansion
Because of the events described, when Leovigildo assumed the throne the kingdom was diminished territorially by internal rebellions and surrounded by dangerous enemies: the native inhabitants of the Cantabrian Mountains, the Suevi, and even more so the Franks and the Byzantines, two expansionist powers. To restore the borders of his kingdom, Leovigild devoted the first part of his reign to conducting one war campaign per year, something that no other Gothic king had done in the entire sixth century.
Campaign of 570-571 against the Byzantines
Leovigild's first target was the Byzantine province of Spania. In 570 the Gothic king focused on the region of Baza and Málaga with the probable aim of dividing Byzantine territory in two. It did not succeed, although it does seem that Baza was reconquered, since its bishop attended the III Council of Toledo in 589. In 571, Leovigildo attacked the western limit of the Byzantine province, where he took the city of Asidonia (the current Medina Sidonia)., but only thanks to the betrayal of a certain Framidaneo. After these modest results, Leovigildo gave up attacking Spania again.
Campaign of 572 against Córdoba
In 572 Leovigildo finally managed to seize Córdoba and put an end to his long rebellion of more than two decades. Juan de Biclaro explains that for this the Gothic king also conquered "many cities and castles after killing multitudes of peasants". This passage from Biclarense was interpreted by E. A. Thompson as the first peasant revolt in Visigothic Spain, but it does not seem likely that this was the case. Surely, the Cordovan landowners would manage to mobilize the peasants and thus commit them to their revolt.
Campaign of 573-575 against the intermediate territories between Suevi and Visigoths
The year after the reconquest of Córdoba, Leovigildo completely changed the scene of his war campaigns, which until then had been limited to Andalusia. Undoubtedly, he made this decision prompted not so much by the death of his brother Liuva, as has been suggested, as by the attack that same year 572 by the Swabian king Miro against the "roccones or runcones", an enigmatic people that now appears for the first time. and penultimate time in history and that he probably lived in present-day Asturias. This campaign by Miro must have alarmed Leovigildo, since from then on he began a race to seize the independent territories located between the two rival kingdoms, the Swabians and the Goths.
Thus, in 573 Leovigildo attacked and defeated the “sappos”, a town inhabiting Sabaria of whom this is the first and last mention in history. Its territory, which was incorporated into the Visigothic kingdom, was surely located in a mountainous region through which the Sabor River runs, between the current Spanish province of Zamora and the Portuguese district of Braganza.
In 574 Leovigildo conquered Cantabria, a territory of indigenous people who were always rebellious and had surely lived independently since the end of the Roman Empire.
Finally, in 575 the Gothic king occupied the Aregenses mountains, in the eastern end of Ourense, territory that, in theory, formed part of the Suevian kingdom of Miro, but in which in recent times a stronghold had become strong. local warlord named Aspidio.
Brief campaign of 576 against the Suebi kingdom
Finally, in 576 Leovigild decided that the time had come to attack the Suevian kingdom. However, for unknown reasons, he soon stopped his offensive and accepted the peace offered by Miro, who, probably, agreed in return to submit to some kind of subservience to Leovigild. Whether this was so or not, all we know is that the Gothic monarch postponed his attack on Swabian territory for more than a decade.
Campaign of 577 in Sierra Morena
The following year Leovigildo radically changed the war scene once more and attacked Orospeda, a region located at the eastern end of the Sierra Morena where the aristocracy had established itself as an independent power. The territory was subdued without major difficulties, but soon after the local peasants revolted, which, this time, constitutes the only peasant revolt in Visigothic Spain. But this revolt was soon contained.
After 578
A year of peace: 578
In 578 Leovigild did not carry out any campaign. He surely decided that since the Byzantine territories of Spania were too ambitious a goal and he had chosen to postpone the conquest of the Suevian kingdom, he had no more military objectives to accomplish. However, there was another territory in the Iberian Peninsula that escaped the control of the Gothic kingdom: the mountainous part of the Basque Country, inhabited by Basques as accustomed as their Cantabrian neighbors to living independently of any power since the end of the Roman Empire. But, unlike the Cantabrians, the Basques had no strategic interest for Leovigildo, since they did not make a border with the Suevi, but with the Franks, a power that the Gothic king did not intend to conquer like the Suevi. In fact, it was convenient for Leovigildo to have a "State-cap" between him and the Franks, and the Basques could play that role. Another reason for the contention of Leovigildo and the other Gothic kings against the Basques was surely the difficulty of the terrain, as it was such a wooded and mountainous region. Finally, the local ways of life, both politically and economically, were very primitive, which made this region less interesting for war and would have made it difficult to establish effective control.
In that same year of 578 Leovigildo founded the city of Recópolis (Guadalajara), which made him the first Germanic king to erect a city.
Hermenegildo's rebellion and campaign against the Basques (579-584)
In 579 peace ended, when Leovigild's son, Hermenegildo, took up arms against his father from his position as governor of Baetica recently granted by Leovigildo, in addition, he had been associated with his father's throne since 573. A Unlike usual, Leovigild did not respond immediately to this rebellion this time, but waited until 582 to do so, no doubt because he tried to negotiate a settlement with his son. Hermenegildo had converted to Catholicism, no doubt influenced by his Frankish wife Ingunda, whom he married in 579, and by Leandro of Seville, seeking to turn his rebellion into a religious war between Catholicism and Leovigildo's Arianism. The father-son conflict was attempted to be resolved through dialogue but finally arms were reached and Leovigildo launched a series of campaigns between 582 and 584 against the revolt; in 582 he took Mérida, in 583 Seville and in 584 Córdoba. Hermenegildo was captured and taken to Valencia, to die at the hands of his jailer in Tarragona in 585.
The revolt revealed the impossibility of carrying out the ethnic fusion between the Visigothic minority and the great majority of Hispano-Romans while the conflict between the Arianism of some and the Catholicism of the others persisted.
Leovigildo later launched a campaign against the Basques, probably in response to one of their attacks. The war ended with a victory for the Gothic king, who was satisfied with occupying a part of the Basque territory and founding the city of Victoriaco (probably the current Vitoria) in its territory, which made him the Germanic king who founded the most cities. in an overwhelmingly rural age.
Leovigildo and the Basques
Leovigildo's campaign against the Basques raises a certain amount of controversy, given the exaggerations and misrepresentations that are poured out on it for current political reasons.
Leovigildo undertook various military campaigns throughout the geography of Hispania, recounted in the only contemporary chronicle of Juan de Biclaro, and which resulted in the consolidation of the power of the kingdom of Toledo. In 581, one of these campaigns was directed against the Basques, allowing the foundation of the Visigothic city of Victoriacum or Victoriaco to control the territory of Vasconia.
Probably the reason for this campaign is that Leovigildo knew about the Basque looting in the area between the Ebro and the Pyrenees. The priority given to this campaign, which coincides with the first year of the rebellion of his son Hermenegildo, seems to indicate that these lootings were important. Another explanation would be that the Basques, politically organized since the period of the Low Roman Empire, responded to the conquest attempts and looting by the Visigoths with military campaigns to recover said seized territories.
Victoriacum Foundation
The Basque campaign ended with a victory over the Basques near the place where Victoriacum was founded, possibly the current city of Vitoria, in the plains of Álava, a fortress that would control both the western mountains of Navarre and the area of the Basque depression. Although this enclave, like Oligitum, the current Olite, seems to have been founded as a defensive bastion against the Basques, who lasted outside of Visigothic control, in the mountainous area north of the divide of waters, although from Olite to the watershed there are about 60 km to the North, which include Pamplona and its entire basin, the Pyrenean valleys, Barranca and the Améscoas, all of which currently belong to Navarra. The construction works for a car park in Pamplona uncovered Visigothic burials that seem to show their attempts to control this area, even if only temporarily. The site was completely excavated in the course of a civil work and Islamic tombs and those belonging to the Basques also appeared.
Leovigildo's wars
Of the 14 years of Leovigildo's reign, only one —578— was he at peace, dedicating himself to the construction of the city of Recópolis, in honor of his son, Recaredo Al beginning of his reign, he undertook campaigns against the Byzantines, with little success. Subsequently, he defeated the uprisings in the south and north of the country, conquering the city of Amaia where the Cantabrian nobles had taken refuge, issuing currency with the legend « Leovigildus Rex Saldania Justus ». In 576 he tried to conquer the Suevian Kingdom and thus fought the Suebi settled in ancient Gallaecia (Galicia) and Lusitania (approx. Northern half), but made peace with King Miro. The definitive conquest of the Suevian Kingdom, after 174 years of independence from the year 411, and being the first Catholic kingdom settled in the Western Roman Empire, would not come until 585 with the battle of Braga, its capital, the metropolitan area of Bracara Augusta. Roman, disputed with Lucus Augusti-Lugo- and Cale-Oporto-, depending on whether a royal faction established itself in power, being king of the Suevos Andeca (or Audeca, or Odiacca). He also fought against the Franks and in 581 against the Basques.
Legislative amendments
During the reign of Leovigildo, the Code of Eurico was revised, transforming it into the Code of Leovigildo, with such important reforms as the abolition of the prohibition of mixed marriages between Visigoths and Hispano-Romans.
Imitatio imperii
Flavio Leovigildo (572-586) king of Hispania, was the first king in Europe to introduce the symbols of royal power, that is, the crown, the scepter, the throne and the purple cloak,an ancient symbol of power of the Roman emperors, having its precedent in his ancestor Teodorico II, which in the words of the historian Javier Arce: what happens in the daily life of the Gothic king Theoderic is that it runs in almost all its aspects as if it were a day of a Roman emperor. Theodoric is and acts like a Roman emperor.
Over time throughout the Middle Ages, they would be symbols adopted by the other European monarchies. It is common in medieval iconography to see the king sitting on his throne, with a crown, scepter and a purple cloak, but after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, in Europe, the Visigoths were the first.