Visigoth Kingdom of Spain

Visigoth Kingdom of Spain

The earliest Visigoths were a Germanic group that alternated between opposing and serving the Roman Empire. Unlike some other Germanic tribes, the Visigoths retained elected leaders, never shifting to a fully hereditary kingship. The early Visigoths, like other Germanic peoples in the late Roman and early post-Roman periods, were Arian Christians—believing that the Son, Christ, had been created by the Father rather than being coeternal, as the Catholic Church believed.

This meant that Visigothic kings could not be fully sure of the loyalty of the Catholic Church in their dominions, although they did not attempt to destroy the church or extirpate Catholicism.

After the famous sack of Rome by the Visigothic king Alaric in 410 c.e., the Visigoths settled in southern France, from which they first spread into the Iberian Peninsula in 416, as allies of the Roman emperor Honorius. The Roman government was trying to regain control of the province, then in the hands of a barbarian coalition. The Visigoths returned to Spain, this time permanently, under their King Theodoric II in 456.


The most significant king of this phase of Visigothic history was Euric, who reigned from 466 to 484, under whom the Visigothic kingdom, with its capital at Toulouse, reached its greatest geographical extent, incorporating most of Iberia. Euric eliminated the last areas of direct Roman rule in Spain following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476.

The Visigothic kingdom was based in Spain after 507, when the Visigoths were defeated and the Catholic Franks under Clovis killed their king, Alaric II. In alliance with the Burgundians, the Franks drove the Visigoths out of nearly all their possessions in France.

The sole remainder of the French Visigothic kingdom was Septimania, between the Pyrenees and the lower Rhone. The Visigoths also lost some coastal territories in southern Spain to the Byzantines under the Emperor Justinian I.

The most important rulers in sixth-century Visigothic Spain were Leovigild, who reigned 568–586, and his son Reccared, who reigned 586–601. Leovigild reinvigorated the Visigothic monarchy, defeated the Suevi kingdom of northwestern Spain and incorporated it into the Visigothic kingdom, and drove the Byzantines from all but a few small footholds in the south.

He also established a permanent capital at Toledo— previously, Visigothic rulers had traveled through the peninsula rather than having a permanent base. Leovigild was also a lawgiver, promulgating extensive revisions of the earlier code of King Euric.

In 587 Reccared solved the problem of the kingdom’s religious divisions by converting to Catholic, Trinitarian Christianity, the religion of nearly all of his non-Visigothic subjects, as well as a growing number of Visigoths.

He extended this conversion to his kingdom in the Third Council of Toledo in 589. At this council Reccared, his family, and other leaders of the kingdom formally renounced Arianism before the Catholic bishops.

The new regime was intolerant toward Arians, and Recarred crushed a series of rebellions led by Arian clergy and believers. The removal of the religious divisions between the Visigoths and the Roman elite led to greater assimilation between the two groups.

The seventh-century Visigothic monarchy was marked by strong cooperation between church and state, with the king making ecclesiastical as well as civil and military appointments, building churches, and working closely with the bishops.

The Catholic Church in Spain, although in communion with Rome, was more subject to the king than to the pope. The Visigothic kingdom was also one of the more peaceful and prosperous areas of the post-Roman West, retaining its links to the Mediterranean economy and a relatively high degree of urbanization.

One way in which the strongly sacral nature of Catholic Visigothic kingship was expressed was a series of decrees against the Jews. The Catholic Visigothic kings were an exception to the generally tolerant practices of Germanic barbarian kings toward the Jews in the early Middle Ages.

King Sisebut (r. 612–621) ordered that Jews be forcibly baptized or exiled from the kingdom. Sisebut was one of the most learned early medieval kings, writing in Latin the Life of St. Desiderius and a poem on eclipses. Legislation was an important component of Visigothic kingship.

The legal decrees and codes issued by the Visigothic rulers show a progression away from different laws for Visigothic and Roman subjects, toward a single code of law for all peoples in the kingdom. This process of assimilation culminated in the Laws of the Visigoths, issued in 654 by King Recceswinth.

Recceswinth, following the path laid out by his father, King Chindaswinth, abolished previous codes of Visigothic and Roman law in favor of a law applying uniformly over Visigothic territory and drawing from both Germanic and Roman sources.

The Laws of the Visigoths, revised again by King Erwig in 681, was the most detailed and sophisticated law code of the early post-Roman kingdoms. The Laws of the Visigoths continued to influence law in Christian Spain long after the fall of the Visigothic kingdom.

Late seventh-century Visigothic kings, although supported by the church, suffered disputed successions, rebellions, and problems with the nobility. A dispute weakened the kingdom before the Arab invasion in 711.

The Arabs also benefited from the Visigothic rulers’ alienation of the Jewish population, who welcomed the Muslim invaders as liberators. The Arabs killed the last Visigothic ruler, King Rodrigo, or Roderic, and the Visigothic kingdom and ethnic identity came to an end.

Eighty Years War (1566-1648)

The rebellion of the Dutch provinces against their Spanish overlords broke out in 1568. It was initially, on the whole, a military disaster, with the Dutch unable to stand in the field against the veteran Spanish tercios.

At that time the rebellious regions had a population of only 75,000; by the turn of the century, the seven provinces that formed the Dutch public had a round one million people.

The Spanish monarchy, by contrast control a population of around 16 million and could draw in resources from a vast empire.

In 1576 the Spanish soldiers, who had not received pay for a considerable of time, started looting and terrorizing village and towns in Brabant and Flanders. The violence was so intense that in July the Council of State in Brussels branded the mutinous Spanish as enemies.

As the result, the war descended into a series of sieges of the many fortified town and cities in the Low Countries.

On 25th September 1576, the States General commissioner several commanding officers who were ordered to assemble an army, was given the task of chasing away the Spanish troops.

This was the longest rebellion in modern European history, the Eighty Years’ War, also known as the Dutch Revolt, freed the seven Protestant United Provinces of the northern Low Countries from Spain rule and led to the formation of the modern Netherlands.

It is the biggest, bloodiest and most implacable of all the wars which have been waged since the beginning of the world.

The Dutch navy, which did not exist in 1568, had achieved the reputation of being the best in the Atlantic world by a series of victories culminating in destruction of a Spanish armada in The Downs.

In June 1648, The Dutch signed a peace treaty at Munster between Dutch and King Philip IV of Spain. For Dutch Republic, the Treaty of Munster was the prize for nearly a century of struggle.

By 1648, Spain’s position as a major power was tenuous: by 1659 she was definitely in decline, a process acetated over the rest of the seventeenth century by a series of costly and destructive wars with France.
Eighty Years War (1566-1648)

By the 1560s, Spain's main policy in North America was to...

• discover new Indian kingdoms that could be conquered and exploited.
• prevent other European states from establishing bases there, which could threaten Spain's power.
• establish colonies of settlement along the Atlantic coast.
• control the fur trade of the North American interior. 

ANSWER: By the 1560s, Spain's main policy in North America was to prevent other European states from establishing bases there, which could threaten Spain's power. 

Spain is The Great Power in The 16th Century

Spain is The Great Power in The 16th Century
By middle of the sixteenth century Spain was the greatest power in Europe. The dominions of Philip II (1556 – 98) of Spain stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific: his continental territories included the Netherlands in the North and Milan and Naples in Italy.

In 1580 Philip II became king of Portugal, uniting all the states of the Iberian Peninsula. With the addition of Portugal’s Atlantic ports and its sizeable fleet, Spanish maritime power now was unsurpassed. Spain was also a great cultural and intellectual center. The fashions and tastes of its golden age dominated all the courts of Europe. The expansion of Spanish domination and the increase of Spain’s wealth and prestige was reflected in a self conscious spirit of national pride that could be seen in the story of Don Quixote, the knight who tilted at windmills in search of greatness in the novel published by Miguel de Cervantes between 1605 and 1615.

In Mediterranean Spain alone stood out against the expansion of Ottoman power. The sultan’s navy continually threatened to turn the Mediterranean into a Turkish lake, while his armies attempted to capture and hold Italian soil. All Europe shuddered at the news each Ottoman advance. Pope called for holy wars against the Turks but only Philip heeded the cry. From nearly moment that he inherited the Spanish crown he took up the challenge of defending European Christianity.

For over a decade Philip maintained costly coastal garrison in North Africa and Italy and assembled large fleets and larger army to discourage or repel Turkish invasions. This sparring could not go on indefinitely, and in 1571 both sides prepared for a decisive battle. A combined Spanish and Italian force of over three hundred ships and eighty thousand men meet an even larger ottoman flotilla off the coasts of Greece. The Spanish naval victory of Lepanto was considered one of the great events of the sixteenth century, celebrated in story and songs for the next three hundred years, though the Turks continued to menace the Mediterranean islands, Lepanto marked the end of Ottoman advanced.
Spain is The Great Power in The 16th Century