Leovigild

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Leovigild statue in Madrid (around 1750)

Leovigild († April / May 586 in Toledo ) was king of the Visigoths on the Iberian Peninsula from 569 to 586 , from 571/572 also in the imperial part of Septimania (in today's southwestern France). He is considered an important ruler because he consolidated the power of kingship and redesigned it according to the Roman model, subjugating the Suebi and prevailing against the Eastern Romans. However, his religious policy remained unsuccessful overall, since he did not succeed in religiously unifying the empire on the basis of Arianism .

Elevation and power sharing

After the death of King Athanagild , the empire remained without a ruler for months until the noble Liuva I was made king in September 568/569 . Liuva made his younger brother Leovigild co-ruler, leaving Spain to him and keeping only Septimania for himself. Leovigild, whose first wife, the mother of his two sons, had died, married Athanagild's widow Goswintha . After Liuva's death, Leovigild was able to unite both parts of the empire under his rule in 571/572.

Iberian Peninsula and the domains of the Visigoths and the remaining Byzantine Empire (around 586 AD)

Successful campaigns

The first goal of Leovigild was to reduce the size of the eastern Roman province of Spania, created by Emperor Justinian I , in the south of the Iberian Peninsula . On a first campaign in 570 he could only wreak havoc, but not conquer fortified cities. In the following year, however, he succeeded in taking Medina-Sidonia through treason , whereupon he had the Eastern Roman occupation executed. The Eastern Romans were unable to send reinforcements and had to come to terms with the loss of territory. In 572, Leovigild was also able to conquer Córdoba and its surroundings, an area that had previously been under the control of unknown local forces.

After this success in the south, Leovigild turned to northern Spain to subdue independent tribal areas and a local ruler. In 574 he defeated the Cantabrians and took their capital Amaya (today's province of Burgos ). They had previously formed an aristocratic republic that was subordinate to a council ("Senate"). Here, too, after the victory, Leovigild ordered numerous executions and annexed the area. With Miro , king of the Suebi , he concluded a truce.

In 578 he founded Reccopolis . Three years later (581) Leovigild moved against the Basques and conquered part of their territory.

Hermenegild revolt

In 573 Leovigild raised his two sons from his first marriage, Hermenegild and Rekkared , to co-rulers in order to secure the rule of his family permanently and to eliminate the right of the nobility to vote. Securing Septimania against Frankish attacks and preventing a Suebi-Franconian alliance were urgent goals of his foreign policy. Therefore he married his older son Hermenegild in 579 to the Frankish princess Ingund , a daughter of King Sigibert I of Austrasia . This resulted in a religious conflict, because Ingund was a Catholic, whereas the Visigoth royal family clung to Arianism, even though a large part of the imperial population was Catholic. Queen Goswintha, who was Hermenegild's stepmother and also Ingund's grandmother (on his mother's side), urged Ingund to convert to Arianism. When Ingund refused, Leovigild defused the conflict by sending his son and daughter-in-law to Seville and giving Hermenegild the administration of a southern part of the empire. There Hermenegild came under the influence of the Catholic Bishop Leander of Seville . Together with Ingund, Leander succeeded in getting Hermenegild to publicly convert to Catholicism. In addition, Hermenegild started a revolt against his father in 579. Research has disputed which of these two events happened first and whether one of them was the cause of the other or whether there was no causal relationship between them. Hermenegild was consistently defensive; apparently he did not want to overthrow his father, but rather to establish an independent Catholic domain with Seville as its center. To this end, he sought the assistance of the Franks and allied himself with the enemies of the empire, the Suebi and the Byzantines. He even ceded the city of Cordoba to the Byzantines, but received no effective help from them.

Leovigild initially strived for a peaceful solution, although Hermenegild minted its own gold coins, behaved like an independent ruler and appeared as a champion of Catholicism. Eventually, Leovigild took action against his rebellious son with a superior force. From the year 582 he subjugated the fallen areas in just under two years; In 583 he began the siege of Seville. He won Cordoba back from the Byzantines through a cash payment. Hermenegild surrendered at the beginning of 584. Ingund found refuge with Hermenegild's son Athanagild in the Byzantine sphere of influence. She died in Africa; Athanagild was brought to Constantinople.

Hermenegild remained in custody. In 585 he was assassinated, allegedly for refusing to return to Arianism. The background to the crime remains unclear, and it is uncertain whether Leovigild gave the order to kill.

Submission of the Suebi and Frankish War

The Suebi under King Miro, who were already Catholic, wanted to rush to Hermenegild's aid, but were unable to achieve anything militarily. Miro died on this campaign. In the Suebian kingdom there was a dispute over royal dignity; Miro's son and successor was overthrown by a usurper. Leovigild used this turmoil to subdue the Suebi in 585, and met with little resistance. This ended the Suebian kingship. The Suebi area was incorporated into the Visigoth Empire.

The Merovingian Frankish king Guntram I tried in vain to conquer Visigoth Septimania. The Franks were able to take Carcassonne at first , but then suffered heavy defeats against the Visigoths led by the heir to the throne Rekkared, who recaptured the lost territories and for their part advanced into Frankish territory.

Imitation of the Empire

Leovigild sought to give his kingship imperial splendor by orienting himself on the Roman tradition. He took not only the contemporary Eastern Roman Empire, but also older (Western) Roman customs as a model. This "imperialization" of the Visigoth kingship included the following measures:

  • Leovigild was the first King of the Visigoths to wear a special ruler's robe and sit on a throne "among his own" - also outside of diplomatic occasions. He is depicted on coins in a royal robe .
  • Before Leovigild, the Visigoths had minted gold coins with the image and name of the respective emperor, thereby respecting a privilege of the emperor. Leovigild started adding his own picture and name to his coins. On the occasion of military successes (the conquest of Seville, Córdoba and Braga ), coins with corresponding inscriptions were struck according to Roman custom. The model for this was not the contemporary Eastern Roman coinage, but the old Western Roman one.
  • With the founding of cities, Leovigild also followed up on the imperial Roman tradition. This was also reflected in the naming of the new cities: one was called Reccopolis (in honor of Rekkared), another, founded on the occasion of the victory over the Basques, was called by the king Victoriacum ("Victory City"). This policy also included the elevation of Toledo to the new capital of the empire. In this capacity as the ruler's permanent residence, Toledo appeared from 580 onwards .

legislation

Leovigild arranged for a record of all applicable law, that is, the older laws and his own. One goal of his legislative work was the legal harmonization of Romans and Goths, with which he strengthened the unity of the inhabitants of the empire. The ethnic units (gentes) were to become an imperial people (populus) . So far the Goths had their tribal law (Codex Euricianus) , while the Romans had their own code of law based on the Roman tradition (Lex Romana Visigothorum) . Leovigild ended this legal separation at least partially with his code of law; This finally took place under Rekkeswinth . Leovigild lifted the ban on marriage between Goths and Romans, which had already been disregarded many times, and introduced the law of inheritance of daughters, which applies to the Romans, to the Goths as well.

Religious politics

As in the legal system, Leovigild also strived for standardization in the religious field. His goal was a common state religion for all residents of the Reich. According to him, this should be the traditional Arianism of the Goths. Therefore he tried to influence the Catholics through pressure, persuasion and rewards. The Catholic Bishop Vincentius of Saragossa converted to Arianism. The king contented himself with this tactic of attrition and did not undertake a comprehensive attack on the Catholic Church. He allowed the practice of Catholic religion and the replacement of vacant Catholic dioceses. The king's measures, which the Catholics complained of as persecution, apparently only began after the Hermenegild revolt. The Catholic historian Isidore of Seville claims that Leovigild sent numerous Catholic bishops into exile; but only two are known by name, Masona of Mérida and Leander of Seville. In the case of Leanders, who had compromised himself politically as a counselor to Hermenegild, it was possibly a question of voluntary exile. The chronicler Johannes von Biclaro , who later - after Leovigild's death - became Bishop of Girona , was also banished .

In 580 a council of Arian bishops met in Toledo, the only one we know of in Visigoth history. At the request of the king it passed resolutions on dogmatics and cult, which the Catholics accommodated in order to make it easier for them to convert; Catholic baptism was recognized as valid. These steps were taken under the influence of the Hermenegild uprising that broke out the previous year. The intervention of the king even in dogmatic matters corresponded to Eastern Roman custom; it was not customary in the Arian churches of the Germanic empires. The successes of Leovigild's religious policy remained isolated; overall it failed because Catholicism was already too strong.

literature

Web links

Commons : Leovigild  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ^ Dietrich Claude: Nobility, Church and Kingship in the Visigoth Empire. Sigmaringen 1971, p. 57f. ( online ).
  2. ^ Dietrich Claude: Nobility, Church and Kingship in the Visigoth Empire. Sigmaringen 1971, p. 56 ( online ).
  3. ↑ Harold V. Livermore, The Origins of Spain and Portugal. London 1971, pp. 163-166.
  4. ↑ Helmut Castritius : Hermenegild , in: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde , Vol. 14, 1999, p. 424; Antonio Linage Conde: Herménégilde , in: Dictionnaire d'histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques Vol. 24, 1993, Col. 90.
  5. ^ Edward A. Thompson : The Goths in Spain. Oxford 1969, pp. 87-90.
  6. ^ Edward A. Thompson: The Goths in Spain. Oxford 1969, p. 75.
  7. ↑ See also Alexander Pierre Bronisch: The Visigoth imperial ideology and its further development in the empire of Asturias. In: Franz-Reiner Erkens (Ed.): The early medieval monarchy. Idea and religious foundations Berlin 2005, pp. 161–189, here: pp. 161f.
  8. ^ Isidore of Seville , Historia Gothorum 51; Dietrich Claude: Nobility, Church and Royalty in the Visigoth Empire. Sigmaringen 1971, pp. 61-64 ( online ).
  9. ^ Dietrich Claude: Nobility, Church and Kingship in the Visigoth Empire. Sigmaringen 1971, pp. 70-72 ( online ).
  10. ^ Dietrich Claude: Nobility, Church and Kingship in the Visigoth Empire. Sigmaringen 1971, p. 73 ( online ).
  11. ^ Edward A. Thompson: The Goths in Spain. Oxford 1969, pp. 78-87.
  12. ^ Dietrich Claude: Nobility, Church and Kingship in the Visigoth Empire. Sigmaringen 1971, pp. 72, 74.
predecessor Office successor
Liuva I. King of the Visigoths
568-586 		Rekkared I.
personal data
SURNAME Leovigild
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Visigoth king in Spain
DATE OF BIRTH 5th century or 6th century
DATE OF DEATH April 586 or May 586
Place of death Toledo