History of Europe

The list of the Gothic Kings (in its criminal version). From Leovigildo to Ervigio

And to close this trilogy, what better way than to start with King Leovigildo , the most important of all the Visigothic kings and whose reign marked a before and after. In fact, until his arrival on his throne it was different. You have already verified that the Goths could not live without a king (interregnums lasted only a few minutes), but after the death of Atanagildo there was a power vacuum of several months in which the unity of the kingdom was in danger and, moreover, with the fox , Byzantine and Frankish version, at the gates of the chicken coop. So, Liuva was made king. , more out of necessity than out of conviction. Aware of the precarious situation, the new king appointed his brother Leovigildo heir and associated him with the throne.

They divided up the territory and, although the owner was Liuva, Leovigildo was the one who cut the cod. And he was closing fronts:he cornered the Byzantines in the Levantine area, definitively expelled the Swabians from Galicia and, to win over the local nobility, he married a Hispano-Roman woman with whom he had two children: Hermenegildo and Recaredo . After the death of his first wife, he once again made a splash by marrying Gosvinta for the second time. , widow of Atanagildo and with 8 Gothic surnames. Once the territory was pacified, he got down to work on the arduous task of political and social integration between the majority Hispano-Roman population and the Gothic minority in power. Seeking unification, he promulgated a legal code in which, for example, it was established…

That the matrimonial union of a Goth with a Roman woman, as well as a Roman with a Goth, be allowed.

The approval of the law on mixed marriages had to be accompanied, yes or yes, by religious unity, because the confessional difference was the true hallmark of each group, even more than its origins. And Leovigildo got to it, but in the wrong way, since he tried it via Arianism, and failed. In the umpteenth Visigothic attempt to establish a pact with the northern power, in 579 he married his eldest son Hermenegild to the princess Ingunda , daughter of the Frankish king Sigeberto and of Brunequilda (daughter of Gosvinta). And here it is necessary to specify a very important piece of information for history:Ingunda was not Catholic, she was the following (by hearing full mass every Sunday and holy days). Logically, when she arrived at the court of Toledo she was received with open arms by Gosvinta, her grandmother on her mother's side and, at the same time, mother-in-law (if you allow me to use that term). Ingunda verified in her own flesh that a mother-in-law is worse than a mother-in-law, because from the first moment the queen tried to convince her granddaughter to abjure her Catholic faith and embrace Arianism. Ingunda's refusal unleashed Gosvinta's anger and showed that it was a goda to take up arms:he grabbed her by the hair and threw her to the ground, beat her up with sticks and then ordered that, just as she was, covered in blood, she be stripped naked. and thrown into a pond to be renamed Arianism. Even Leovigildo himself was frightened by the methods of his wife and decided to move Hermenegildo and his wife away from Toledo, granting them the government of Baetica. And there, far from the Arian court and with the collaboration of the bishop of Seville Leander , Ingunda turned the tables and managed to get her husband to convert to Catholicism. And not only that, with the support of the local nobility from the south of Despeñaperros and the complicit wink of the Byzantines, he proclaimed himself king and rebelled against his father. And again Hispania, sleeve by shoulder. With much pain in his heart, or so I think, Leovigildo and Recaredo marched against Seville, where the convert had taken refuge. After a two-year siege, escapes, exiles, captures and dizzying the partridge, Saint Hermenegildo, because he was also canonized, found his death in Tarragona, where he was a prisoner. In a last attempt to get the lost sheep back from the Arian fold and reconcile with his father, he was offered his freedom on the condition that he receive communion from an Arian bishop. And not even then. So, by order of his father, a certain Sisberto he split her head in two with a mallet. Years later, when his brother Recaredo occupied the throne of his father, he ordered to execute the aforementioned. It is said that, on his deathbed, Leovigildo realized that the long-awaited religious unification, which would consolidate the domination of the Visigothic monarchy over Hispanic lands, had to take place through Catholic means, for which he advised Recaredo to convert to the religion of the local population. And so he did, Recaredo himself in 587 and the entire Gothic population in 589 at the Third Council of Toledo. All of Hispania was under the umbrella of the Trinitarian God.

Recaredo Conversion

In any case, do not be dazzled by the tinsel and pageantry of religious unification, because the Goths continued with their ancient custom of regicides. Without going any further, Liuva II , son of Recaredo, suffered it in the meat of him. There were three problems that Liuva faced:he was very young when he ascended the throne, there were still some Goth nobles scalded by conversion, and furthermore, he only had 4 Goth surnames (his mother was a commoner). All that was needed was for the exploiter on duty to appear in front of the dissatisfied, and this was Witerico . For a beardless 18-year-old, the offer of Witeric, a warrior hardened in a thousand battles, was very tempting:“put me at the head of your armies and, in your name, I will rid our land of the Byzantines " (or something like that). Liuva already saw his name in history books, as well as in streets and squares throughout Hispania. His fame blinded him and he put the cunning Witerico in command of his troops. Before leaving Toledo, Witerico turned around, seized the good Liuva and ordered his execution. And since Gothic justice does not spare even one, he "had killed with the sword and died with the sword." In 610 a conspiracy of nobles, close to Leovigild's family and dissatisfied with his permissive policy towards the Arians, assassinated him during a banquet. They saw fit, after his death, to drag his body through the streets of Toledo.

And we continue this review of the criminal list of the Gothic kings with Tulga and Wamba , another of the greats. Our good friend Tulga he will have the honor of inaugurating the capillary version of regicide:the tonsure or, to be more graphic, the decalvation . In fact, if he had not suffered this dishonor, which for a Goth was very much so, his reign would have been inconsequential for this article... and for history. The little more than two years that his reign lasted, he did so because there were so many candidates to dethrone him that none decided to give the final blow, until Chindasvinto , a man with many more years lived than to live - he was almost 80 - and seeing that the last train to the throne of Toledo could escape him, he took the bull by the horns and staged a coup d'état. As the deposed king had also done nothing wrong, apart from succeeding his father in 640, he spared his life and settled for tonsuring him. For the Goths, the long hair was a symbol of strength and nobility, and if Samson lost his strength when his hair was cut, the Goths with the tonsure lost the possibility of governing and we had no choice but to retire to a convent and dedicate themselves to contemplative life.

Another who suffered this type of humiliation in his flesh was Wamba but under very different circumstances. In accordance with the regulations promulgated in the different councils of Toledo, in which it was established that once the king died, the palatine nobles and the bishops would elect, in the capital or in the place where the king had died, the new sovereign from among the Gothic nobility, Wamba was proclaimed king in 672 in the lands of present-day Valladolid, where his predecessor Recesvinto died. . And from the beginning he showed that he was different, as different as he refused the election alleging that he was not prepared for these tasks and that he was already very old-he was over 70-.

Wamba refusing the crown

That fact was so unusual that nobody knew what to do, they looked at each other and nobody said this mouth is mine. Until a nobleman, seeing that this could end up like the Rosario de la Aurora, threatened him with a phrase like:“the scepter or death ”. “If I have no choice, the scepter ”, the old man should have replied. I understand that many accuse him of false modesty or that it was nothing more than a pose to make himself be asked, because from the beginning he showed himself to be an energetic and determined king.

Like any self-respecting Visigothic king, he had to put down the occasional conspiracy attempt and, above all, a full-fledged rebellion, led by Paulo , one of his generals of Hispano-Roman descent. While the king went on the usual campaigns against the unrepentant Vascones, the Duke of Tarraconense took up arms and Wamba sent Paulo to quell the rebellion. And he not only did not do it, but he joined the cause and with the support of the duke and the bishops of the area he was crowned king. The election of Paulo, whichever way you look at it, was a usurpation:it did not take place after the king's death; he did not belong to the Gothic nobility, in fact he was the first who, without belonging to this select group, tried to depose the king; and he was not elected by the palatine nobles and the bishops (only the Duke of Tarraconense and the bishops of the local archbishopric were present). So it was only natural that Wamba shouted “betrayal” while leading his army to Narbonne. Despite the king's heat, the trip served to calm him down and organize a plan of attack on several fronts that managed to surround the rebels. Paulo was able to escape and took refuge in Nimes. The last rebels became strong in the amphitheater of this town, taking advantage of its structure they fortified themselves and resisted the attack of the royal army. Three days of siege were enough for the quarrels and accusations to begin between the besieged who, seeing that they had no chance of victory and that this was nothing more than prolonging the agony, surrendered without further fighting and asked the king for mercy. Wamba spared their lives, but right there he staged a macro-trial and judged the rebels. After the judicial process was over, and respecting the word given to spare their lives, Paulo and his supporters suffered a ritual humiliation, forcing them to parade through Toledo with their heads and beards shaved, barefoot, dressed in ragged clothes and mounted on carts pulled by camels. (yes, yes, in Spain at that time there were camels). Paulo, as a banner of betrayal, led the procession and was crowned, since he liked being king so much, with a humiliating sardine skin. With everything more or less in order, Wamba did not stay to see them coming and, knowing that all the intrigues and conspiracies to succeed had to have members of the nobility and the clergy behind him, he enacted laws that limited the power of the nobility, putting them at the direct service of the king, and reorganized the ecclesiastical structure to make it clear that they held their positions by royal concession. And this, in the long run… pays off. And Wamba paid for it on October 14.

That autumn day of the year 680, the king, already in his eighties, was not very Catholic and they gave him a concoction, restorative type, but he really had a powerful hypnotic that left him dying. Feeling dying, and in the company of Bishop Julián de Toledo and Ervigio , a member of the palatine nobility, signed the abdication in favor of the latter. They dressed him in the robes and he received the ecclesiastical tonsure (necessary to enter a religious order) so that he would meet the Creator as a member of his Church. Surprising locals and strangers, Wamba managed to recover. Imagine the surprise when he put his hand to his head and realized that he was unfit to rule. He tried to get the Church and the nobles to change the law to take back the throne from him, claiming that they had poisoned him. Neither of them did anything, and he had no choice but to retire to the Pampliega monastery in Burgos, where he died 8 years later. One might think that both the bishop and Ervigio had acted in good faith when they believed that he was going to die, had it not been for what happened a few days later:Ervigio repealed all laws that limited the power of the nobles and the clergy. . White and bottled. In short, Wamba had the same two enemies as the rest of the Visigoth kings:the nobility and the clergy.

Like the following Gothic kings (Egic , Witiza and Rodrigo ) it is not known how he died, we end this trilogy here.

Seen what we have seen, it is normal that the expression “morbo Gothorum was coined ” or “illness of the Goths”, which was none other than to assassinate their kings or, at least, dethrone them. And even so, we would be wrong to think that it was a practice typical of this monarchy, since it is a vice that we find in other monarchies of the same period and of earlier and later times, of different cultures, not only the medieval Christian, and of hereditary monarchies, such as the Byzantine or the Islamic. For example, when Mehmed II was appointed sultan of the Ottoman Empire, he imposed the so-called law of fratricide to prevent civil wars between the possible heirs to the throne, as had happened to his grandfather Mehmed I. According to this law, when he was appointed a new sultan, all his surviving brothers were strangled. Of course, they had the detail that he was with silk thread and not with a common hemp rope. The greatest slaughter took place in the succession of Mehmed III, when 19 of his brothers were killed. This practice was abandoned in the 17th century by Ahmed I and replaced by imprisonment in the Kafes (which could be translated as a cage), a set of rooms in the Topkapi Palace where potential successors to the throne were kept under arrest and in constant custody. surveillance.

You know, bad for many... epidemic.