2. Yo, El Rey: The Visigoths

Music.

Welcome to the Spanish ArPodA. I'm Sarah.

And I'm Peter.

And we are ranking and reviewing all of the rulers of Spain in this series, Yo el Rey, from Leovigild to Felipe VI. Again, today, we're not going to be reviewing any person. No, we're still got some background stuff. I wanted to talk about the Visigoths for a bit.

It seems like we're being very teasing to the audience, but okay.

We are, a little, little teasing, I think so. But I, I'm aware that an English speaking audience doesn't know a lot about Spain, and I really kind of want to talk about some very important things that you need to know about the Visigoths before we get started.

Well and, and it's hard to imagine being bored by the Visigoths. I mean, I immediately think of large men and leather putting things to the torch. So right off the bat, that's like three or four of my favorite things right there. So let's do it. Anyway.

All right, so the Visigoths, this is kind of a background episode of them. These are, this is the first post Roman kingdom in the Iberian Peninsula, the Visigoths. But they're not native to the area at all. So the Goths are what the Romans called barbarians, which sounds terrible, but they called everybody barbarians,

Right, right. And if I can just introduce a little bit of trivia. Do you know where the word barbarian comes from?

Now, I've heard a couple stories, but I'm not sure what, what -

The one, the one that I heard and believe, is that it's a Greek word, and it was coined, no doubt, by the Athenians in the, in the golden era of Greece, and "barbar" in Greek is the equivalent in English of "blah, blah, blah". So if you, if you did not speak Greek, you were a barbarian. It

Yeah. You basically just went blah, blah, blah, all literally meant one who does not speak Greek. That's how nationalistically insane the Greeks were, if you would, did not speak Greek, you were subhuman. the time.

Right. And, and, of course the Romans would love, no doubt they love the Greeks. Oh, we can be snobs too. We can be racist too. Watch this.

Yeah. No, not worth listening to if you don't speak Greek or Latin, just blah, blah, blah, I don't know. I don't even want to hear you.

Exactly, that is, that is barbarian. So, so not an insult to the Visigoths to call them barbarian.

No. And as a matter of fact, they had their own language, obviously, but they also had their own writing system, and we do still have a Bible that was written in Gothic script. One of the earliest - No. But the point is, yeah, the Greeks and the Romans

Oh, there are so many Hot Topic jokes that I'm were super snobby about it. But, you know, they, they, they held not making right now, so want to make Hot Topic jokes. All right, keep going. their own. Yes, yes.

Now, so where did they come from? If you study Roman history, or if you listen to Totalus Rankium's first season, you'll hear a lot about the Rhine Legion and the Danube Legions, right? These were the military contingents based on the Roman sides of the aforementioned two rivers to keep barbarians out. So here's some geography again. The Rhine starts at the north of Europe and goes north-south-ish straight down modern day Germany. The west side was Roman

Basically, if you eat goulash, you're in that area.

Yes, well, this is where the Goths come from. They come specifically from the bottom right of that Goth land. So like Romania, Moldova, Ukraine areas. There are actually two groups of Goths. We have the Visigoths, which means Western Goths. They more come from Romania. The Ostrogoths, which means Eastern Goths, more come from Ukraine. Now, obviously the relation is not east-west right now, they got called Visigoths and Ostrogoths because of where they ended up.

Right. Sure.

Over their history, the Goths spent a lot of time raiding south of the Danube, right? So they'd just, they'd cross the river, they'd knock over a couple farms, steal all the resources and the goods.

Right, right, and run back, right.

And run back. Very common. However, a lot of Goths were hired as mercenary soldiers to fight in the Roman army. So for example, if they were going to go out against the Persians, they would hire the Goths to fill out the army. So there's a lot of cultural interchange, both good and bad. This kind of changes in the mid to late, three hundreds, right? The Goths wanted to move south permanently. They wanted to live south of the Danube and live within the Roman Empire. This was because of the Huns.

Oh boy.

Of Attila fame.

There's always somebody. Yeah, okay.

Attila the Hun and his Huns were on the move, and the Goths were scared of them and wanted protection, rightfully

Yes, yes. I was gonna say: sound policy. so.

Yes. So the Emperor at the time was Valens, and he allowed them to cross the river and move south and settle and bring their women and children. But the immigration process was handled really badly, either -

No!!

Either through incompetence, or on purpose.

A mass immigration process was handled poorly by an aging empire. How is that possible? We've, We've got no, we've got no equivalent for it in the modern era. That's just ridiculous.

Well, part of it was incompetence, yes, but part of it was just straight up malfeasance. The general that was assigned to oversee the resettling of these peoples, he had, for example, a set of food supplies that he was supposed to distribute. Well, he just confiscated them and sold them, yeaaaaah. And if they couldn't afford it, your kids don't get any food. So there was a lot, just a lot of issues. This eventually led to war. The Goths went to war against the Romans.

Wow. Okay.

This is one of the things that led to problems later on, because this is a time when a lot of barbarians are crossing the Rhine and the Danube, and they just didn't have the forces to stop it, because most of the forces died at the Battle of Adrianople.

Right, right.

So, yeah, the Goths won the battle, but it didn't really help. They didn't gain any more protections or access to resources.

Yeah, but it must have felt really good.

It probably felt great, but they weren't in any better of a situation.

So much better. Yeah. I mean, you know what did

I'm sure it did, right? So eventually, the Goths get it Custer's Last Stand solve? Nothing, but, oh my god, did it feel so good?

No!!!

Very against this. His general Stilicho, went to war against Alaric and the Goths, many, many times. And this culminates in the sack of Rome in 410, when Alaric just straight up, gives up, goes straight to Rome, sacks the whole city.

Screw this nonsense. Let's just end this.

Exactly. Once again, Totalus Rankium's episode on Alaric. I mean, Stilicho. I mean, Honorius - is really great, right. Honorius was still against giving up any land or power to the Goths, but then other barbarians were sweeping into the Iberian Peninsula, and Honorius decided, okay, we'll settle them there to get rid of the other barbarians. Yeah, that's the only reason he said yes. This is in about 417.

Okay, we're not doing anything with this. You can have it.

You can have it, and you can do your raiding into Spain and get rid of the the Alans and the Vandals and the Suevi who are right there. So now the Goths are settled in southern France as feoderati of the Roman Empire, and they keep Spain pretty calm for a while, and they even help keep the Huns out of Western Europe.

Nice, nice.

Then the Western Roman Empire falls.

I was going to say, but!!

But, yeah, not long for this world. The Visigoths keep

I was going to say, the Roman Empire is gone. It's going on, though, they're ruling over southern France and keeping an eye on Spain, but they start feeling pressure from the Franks. Now that the Roman Empire is gone... got to be a free for all.

It's a free for all. So the Franks, who are another barbarian tribe, start exerting northward pressure, because they're, they're settling in France, right? They end up going to war, the Visigoths and the Franks. They have a battle in 507, the Battle of Voulé, I believe it's pronounced. Oh, let me just say this right now. I'm gonna butcher me some Visigothic names.

Alrighty.

They're, they're Germanic and old, and I'm not, not my strong point. Anyway, so after this battle in 507-

I don't think that's gonna get you canceled. I don't know. I don't know who would object. But, you know, you never know.

Maybe Hot Topic.

Yeah, exactly.

Right. So after this battle, the Visigoths are kicked almost entirely out of France. They end up settling in Spain. They eventually set up Toledo, and that is their new capital since they lost Toulouse. And with the help of the Ostrogoths, who have set up in Italy at this point. They, they, they stabilize things. And so the Visigothic rulers were basically puppets of the Ostrogoths for a while.

Oh, really. Okay.

Yes. And now we're at our current point in history, the year 560. So that's why I decided to start here, rather than with Alaric or with the battle of Voulé or anything like that. I didn't think I could improve on the Totalus Rankium episode about Alaric. First of all. And I didn't want to start in 507, because almost immediately after that, the Visigoths have a regency that was completely controlled by the Ostrogoths. And then on and off, the Visigothic rulers are just

I mean, not to mention the fact that if this is a story about kings, the people in charge need to be the people we're talking about.

Well, and it's not until the first ruler that we cover, Leovigild, that the Visigoths really controlled the bulk of the Iberian Peninsula. Right? There were just a lot of, lot of issues. All right.

Okay.

Not Catholic at all. They are Arian. Now, Arian is not spelled with a Y, it's spelled with an I. They are followers of a heretic called Arius. That's why they're called Arians. Arians differ from Catholics, and I'm simplifying this massively, because I know we don't really want to get into, you know, heretical sects and very small points of difference of faith. And things like that.

This is one of those things that, I should know more about it than I do, because I've read a lot about the Arian heresy, which continues to be a thing for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, or at least hundreds and hundreds of years. But I swear to God, every time I read about it, my eyes glaze over, and I start to think about, are the prequels really the worst movies ever made? And, you know, just I go elsewhere so.

Well, it's pretty simple. Here's -

Please give me the matchbook. Yes, please.

This is going to seem very minuscule and not really important to non-Catholics.

So in other words, it's Catholic.

Right. It, it will also probably not seem very important to anybody who doesn't live in the Classical Age. But here we

When it comes to the Christian Trinity of Father Son and Holy Spirit, Arians believe that Jesus is subordinate to God and that the Holy Spirit is subordinate to Jesus. So there's a hierarchy.

So it's a ranking, yes, exactly.

It's a ranking, right. Catholics believe that they are all equal to each other, and, in fact, the same essence. That's the difference.

That's the difference.

That's it. That's the whole difference. Constantine the Great was the emperor who first converted to Christianity and made Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire. And he was super annoyed at, at Arianism.

Really?!

Well, I mean, the point of having an organized religion be the state religion is that you can take advantage of the organization. And if there's a schism, then that just ruins it.

Oh no, no, no, yeah. Oh no, absolutely.

Yeah. What's the point of an organized state religion if it's not organize.

Exactly.

So he calls the Council of Nicaea to settle this. He gets all of the bishops and high up people in the church together, and he says, fix it. Decide what's right. Are they the same, or is it a ranking? Arius himself actually attended. Yeah. He attended and debated his side. And debates got so heated that it is said that St. Nicholas slapped Arius across the face.

Wow!!

Yeah!!

This is one of those things, where, does everybody make it out unburned?

Nobody was burned. But it was very polemical, and eventually the Catholic vision won out.

Also, I'd just like to point out that he got slapped by Santa Claus. How much of a *** do you have to be to get slapped by Santa Claus?

The man who is known for giving presents, yes, yeah. All right, yeah. So Arianism was officially a heresy. And this was unfortunate for the Visigoths, because they had first been converted to Christianity by Arian missionaries in the two hundreds.

I see. Ohhhhhhh.

So they were firmly Arian.

Basically, this is like my parents back in the day, buying Betamax. They went, they went with Betamax, and everybody else said, No, it's VHS. You're not going to be able to use.... Well anyway.

Well, you gotta, once you commit, it's really hard to come back.

It really is.

And at this point in our story, in the five hundreds, the Visigoths are one of the only groups in the West to be Arian, right?

Oh, boy.

The Franks are Catholic. The Anglo-Saxons are just starting to become Catholic. The Irish are definitely Catholic.

No?!?!

The Goths are the odd ones out here. This is going to be a problem for several Visigothic rulers. So that's, that's the first thing you need to know: not Catholic.

Okay, not Catholic, gotcha.

The second thing you need to know about the Visigoths is how they ran their successions when the previous king died. Primogeniture, which means that the oldest son of the king will inherit the entire kingdom from his father, it hadn't really been entrenched anywhere in Western Europe at the time.

No, okay.

Nobody really did primogeniture. And annoyingly, every barbarian kingdom seemed to do their succession a little differently. Yeah.

Guys!!!

Really annoying.

Look, this is a patriarchy. Guys just, just roll with it.

The Franks, for example, when they did their successions, the father would divide his territories among his sons.

Oh, yeah. Shakespeare wrote a play about that. It doesn't work.

No, it doesn't. Then the sons would pass their territories onto their heirs, right? So this is why, when we start talking about Leovigild in the next episode, we're going to be mentioning three separate Frankish kings. We have Chilperic, Sigibert and Guntrum, and they were the sons of the previous king of the Franks, Clothar. So then you have these little -

I'm sorry, this is, this is the era where we have names that sound like Tolkien's first draft.

That's, that's what I'm saying. I'm, I've probably

Basically, this is a system designed to make school butchered it. Here's some more. Each of these kings ruled different kingdoms within the land of the Franks called Neustria, Austrasia, and Burgundy. I recognize one of those!

One of them, one of them remain. Neustria And Austrasia will eventually go away. So the question for the Franks is, what happens if one king's line runs out. They don't children miserable 1000 years later, because they have to have any more sons. What happens is another of his brothers, or the successor of one of his brothers, will take over and add to his territory. So this is what happened among Chilperic,

Gotcha.

And then Neustria remained with Chilperic's line. memorize. They have to memorize this stuff. So that's how they did it. The alliances and the territories would change as, through conquest or because a king's line ran out. Well, Battle Royale has been having - another great ranking podcast - has been having a great time with the Merovingian kings,

I would, I would imagine.

So this is not how the Visigoths did it at all.

Okay, good, good, well.

But the Visigoths, it's slightly simpler. The norm was for there to be just one monarch.

Okay, good.

Visigothic succession is elective. So what that, what that means is that when the king dies, the nobles get together and they choose another king. Doesn't have to be the king's son. However, the king typically wants it to be the king's son, right? So many kings tried to goose their son's chances to inherit the throne by associating their sons to the kingship.

I see, I see, I see, yes.

They would, for example, delegate a part of the kingdom to their son to rule. Or they make their son a general, or something like that.

Right. I'm not saying that Dan Junior is going to take over the franchise. I'm just saying he's assistant manager of the day shift.

Exactly.

I see.

And what this typically meant is, when the king died, the nobles would be more likely to choose the associated son, because, he'd already been doing it.

Right. Devil You Know, right, sure.

And we will see this happen with Leovigild. But it doesn't have to happen. So... So this, this will be very, very interesting to see.

No, okay, good. We're not going to have a straight father-to-son succession through the Visigoths. Yeah, we're starting

It's a lot. Some of them don't rule for -

I was gonna say, given that there can be a great deal of competition and resentment during succession, it's entirely possible that there's gonna be guys who were doing this for like a week.

We don't have any weeks, but we'll, we'll, we'll

Okay, good. get kind of close.

So episodes will be as long as they are, right? I'm not going to try to, I'm not going to try to fill necessarily. If it's a particularly short one, I might release two in the same week, so people don't have a 10 minute episode. But some of them are going to be quite short.

Gotcha.

Yeah. So that is the Visigoths. Next week we're going to do our very first actual ruler. Leovigild.

Oh, goody.

Yes. So I hope you'll tune in to hear that with us.

Please do, please do.

Follow us on social media. We're on Facebook and Twitter as the Spanish ArPodA. We also have an email. I don't think I mentioned in the last one, Spanisharpoda@gmail.com Yeah. So if you'd like to email any questions or concerns or anything like that...

Oh God, not concerns.

No, yeah. Please don't email about how much I butchered Leovigild's name or something.

No, don't do that.

Don't do that. Don't do that. But anything else that you'd like to share with us, go right on ahead. We'll see you next week for our very first ranking.

Yes, see you next week. Bye.