ABSTRACT

The Visigothic kingdom of Spain preceded and outlasted the two other Germanic kingdoms of the Mediterranean basin, the Ostrogothic and the Vandal; it lasted from 466 to 711. Visigothic society falls in with Ostrogothic, Lombard and Vandal society, as against that of the Franks and the Anglo-Saxons, as belonging to a Mediterranean world. Visigothic Spain was a land of Roman temples, villas and basilicas, not all destroyed, and it drew its inspiration in government and art from East Rome. The Auvergnats fought for the Visigoths, but the Visigothic king Alaric lost the battle of the ‘campus Vogladensis’, and his own life. The formal profession of the Catholic faith by the king and the Visigothic nation followed at the III council of Toledo, 589. The characteristic feature of the Visigothic constitution, the council of Toledo, needs to be understood in a Byzantine context, rather than as an Anglo-Saxon witan, or as a normal church synod in the Latin west.