THE END OF ROMAN HISPANIA

PHOTO : IBERIAN PENINSULA AROUND 560 A.D. _________________________________ THE END OF ROMAN-HISPANIA &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Rome's loss of jurisdiction in Hispania began in 409, when the Germanic Buri, Suevi and Vandals, together with the Sarmatian Alans crossed the Rhine and ravaged Gaul until the Visigoths drove them into Iberia that same year. The Suevi established a kingdom in Gallaecia in what is today modern Galicia and northern Portugal. The Hasdingi Vandals (Alans' allies), also established a kingdom in another part of Gallaecia. The Alans established a kingdom in Lusitania – modern Alentejo and Algarve, in Portugal. The Silingi Vandals briefly occupied parts of South Iberia. 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 Athaulf, 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. 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 monarchy. Successive Visigothic kings ruled Hispania as patricians who held imperial commissions to govern in the name of the Roman emperor. In 585 the Visigoths conquered the Suebic Kingdom of Galicia, thus controlling almost all Hispania. Under the Visigoths, lay culture was not as 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 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. The Visigoths are also responsible for the introduction of mainstream Christianity to the Iberian peninsula; the earliest representation of Christ in Spanish religious art can be found in a Visigothic hermitage, Santa Maria de Lara. It also embodied the continuity of Roman order. In addition, Romans continued to run the civil administration and Latin continued to be the language of government and of commerce. Religion was the most persistent source of friction between the Roman Catholic Romans and their Arian Visigothic 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 Visigothic ruler, renounced his Arianism before the Council of Bishops at Toledo and accepted Catholicism, thus assuring an alliance between the Visigothic monarchy and the Romans. This alliance would not mark the last time in the history of the peninsula that political unity would be sought through religious unity. 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. According to Isidore of Seville, it is with the Visigothic domination of the zone that the idea of a peninsular unity is sought after, and the phrase Mother Hispania is first spoken. Up to that date, Hispania designated all of the peninsula's lands. In Historia Gothorum, the Visigoth Suinthila appears as the first monarch where Hispania is dealt with as a Gothic nation. Moorish HispaniaMain articles: Al-Andalus and Reconquista I greet you, oh king of Al-Andalus, she that was called Hispania by the ancients. —Oton's Embassador to Abderramán III in Medina Azahara. The Reconquista, 790–1300.The North African Muslim, referred to as Moorish, conquest of Hispania (اسبانيا, Arabic: Isbānīya), which they called Al-Andalus (الأندلس), gave a new development, both in form and meaning, to the term "Hispania". The different chronicles and documents of the high Middle Ages designate as Spania, España or Espanha only the Muslim-dominated territory. King Alfonso I of Aragon (1104–1134) says in his documents that "he reigns over Pamplona, Aragon, Sobrarbe y Ribagorza", and that when in 1126 he made an expedition to Málaga he "went to the lands of España". But by the last years of the 12th century the whole Iberian Peninsula, whether Muslim or Christian, became known as "Spain" (España, Espanya or Espanha) and the denomination "the Five Kingdoms of Spain" became used to refer to: the Muslim Kingdom of Granada, the Christian Kingdom of Castile and León, the Kingdom of Navarre, the Kingdom of Portugal and the Catalonia and Aragon Confederation, under The Crown of Aragon, but each with their own laws. _________________________________________ The process of the Reconquista (Christian Reconquest of Hispania from the Moors), produced that SOME of the several named Christian kingdoms. merged in centuries to come, into a single country. In fact, the marriage of Elisabeth the First Queen of Castile and Ferran the Second, King of the Confederated Catalonia-Aragon in 1479, (and especially with the incorporation of Navarre later in 1512), opened the way for a future union of all Kingdoms. The word "Spain" (España in Spanish, Espanha in Portuguese), began (..maybe..) being used only to refer to the kingdoms each of them brought to the royal marriage, and not to the whole of the Iberian peninsula. And even so.... Elizabeth could only command over Castile and Leon kingdoms, and Ferran could only command over the Confederated kingdoms of Aragon and Catalonia. Their Royal Motto made it quite clear! It was: "TANTO MONTA, MONTA TANTO, ISABEL COMO FERNANDO. Nowadays, Spain is composed of two independent countries, Portugal and Spain. =============================== BACK TO ROMAN HISPANIA ---------------------- THE IBERIAN PENINSULA'S ECONOMY Before the Punic Wars, Hispania was a land with much untapped mineral and agricultural wealth, limited by the primitive subsistence economies of her native peoples, outside of a few trading ports along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Occupations by the Carthaginians and then by the Romans for her abundant silver deposits developed Hispania into a thriving multifaceted economy. Besides several metals,.... olives, salted fish, and wines were some of the goods produced in Hispania and traded throughout the Empire. Sources and references This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the Library of Congress Country Studies. But the Roman Hispania ended in 415 A.D., at the same time of the Fall of The Roman Empire of Occident. =============================== ******************************* ===============================