Hispania

Hispania was the name given by the Romans to the whole of the Iberian Peninsula (modern Portugal, Spain, Andorra and Gibraltar) and to two provinces created there in the period of the Roman Republic: Hispania Citerior and Hispania Ulterior. In the period of the Roman Empire, Hispania Ulterior was divided into two other provinces, Baetica and Lusitania, while Hispania Citerior was renamed to Tarraconensis.

Later History

Christianity was introduced into Hispania in the first century and it became popular in the cities in the second century. Little headway was made in the countryside, however, until the late fourth century, by which time Christianity was the official religion of the Roman Empire. Some heretical sects emerged in Hispania but the Hispanic church remained subordinate to the Bishop of Rome. Bishops who had official civil as well as ecclesiastical status in the late empire continued to exercise their authority to maintain order when civil governments broke down there in the fifth century. The Council of Bishops became an important instrument of stability during the ascendancy of the Visigoths, a Germanic nation.

Related Topics:
Christianity - Bishop of Rome - Visigoths - Germanic nation

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Rome continued to dominate the area until the collapse of the Roman Empire in the west. The Hispano-Romans turned to the Visigoths to provide protection when Rome could no longer spare legions to protect the territory.

Related Topics:
Collapse of the Roman Empire in the west - Legions

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Rome's loss of power in Hispania began in 405. The Germanic Suevi and Vandals, together with the Sarmatian Alans crossed the Rhine and ravaged Gaul until the Visigoths drove them into Iberia in 409. The Suevi established a kingdom in the northwestern corner of the peninsula (modern Galicia and northern Portugal). The Vandals, and their Alan allies, occupied the region that bears their name - Vandalusia (moder Andalusia, in Spain) and southern Lusitania (modern Alentejo and Algarve, in Portugal) .

Related Topics:
405 - Germanic - Suevi - Vandals - Sarmatian - Alans - Rhine - Gaul - 409 - Galicia - Portugal - Andalusia - Spain - Lusitania - Alentejo - Algarve

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Because large parts of Hispania were outside his control, the western Roman emperor, Honorius (r. 395-423), commissioned his sister, Galla Placidia, and her husband Ataulf, the Visigothic king, to restore order in the Iberian Peninsula. Honorius gave them the rights to settle in and to govern the area in return for defending it.

Related Topics:
Honorius - 395 - 423 - Galla Placidia - Ataulf

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The highly romanized Visigoths entered Hispania in 415 and managed to compel the Vandals and Alans to sail for North Africa in 429. In 484 the Visigoths established Toledo as the capital of their Hispanic monarchy. The Visigothic occupation was in no sense a barbarian invasion, however. Successive Visigothic kings ruled Hispania as patricians who held imperial commissions to govern in the name of the Roman emperor. In 585 the Visigoths

Related Topics:
415 - 429 - 484 - Toledo - 585

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conquered the Suevi kingdom, thus controling almost all Hispania.

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There were about 300,000 Germanic people in Hispania, which had a population of 4 million. They were a privileged warrior elite, though many of them lived as herders and farmers in the valley of the Tagus river, in northern Portugal and Galicia (the Suevi) and on the central plateau (around Toledo). Hispano-Romans continued to run the civil administration and Latin continued to be the language of government and of commerce.

Related Topics:
Tagus - Portugal - Galicia - Suevi - Latin

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Under the Visigoths, lay culture wasn't so highly developed as it had been under the Romans, and the task of maintaining formal education and government shifted decisively to the church because its Hispano-Roman clergy alone were qualified to manage higher administration. As elsewhere in early medieval Europe, the church in Hispania stood as society's most cohesive institution. And it embodied the continuity of Roman order.

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Religion was the most persistent source of friction between the Roman Catholic Hispano-Romans and their Arianist Visigoth overlords, whom the former considered heretical. At times this tension invited open rebellion, and restive factions within the Visigothic aristocracy exploited it to weaken the monarchy. In 589, Recared, a Visigoth ruler, renounced his Arianism before the Council of Bishops at Toledo and accepted Catholicism, thus assuring an alliance between the Visigothic monarchy and the Hispano-Romans. This alliance wouldn't mark the last time in the history of the peninsula that political unity would be sought through religious unity.

Related Topics:
Arianist - 589 - Recared - Catholicism - Monarchy

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Court ceremonials - from Constantinople - that proclaimed the imperial sovereignty and unity of the Visigothic state were introduced at Toledo. Still, civil war, royal assassinations, and usurpation were commonplace, and warlords and great landholders assumed wide discretionary powers. Bloody family feuds went unchecked. The Visigoths had acquired and cultivated the apparatus of the Roman state but not the ability to make it operate to their advantage. In the absence of a well-defined hereditary system of succession to the throne, rival factions encouraged foreign intervention by the Greeks, the Franks, and finally the Muslims in internal disputes and in royal elections.

Related Topics:
Constantinople - Greeks - Franks - Muslims - Elections

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