Visigoths vs. Islam

 I am so glad someone is writing about Visigothic Spain! Spain is the only country to date that, after being conquered by Islam, became Christian again. I think some of the religious art looks almost Celtic. From Hilary White at The Sacred Images Project:

In the standard classroom version of history in which the Visigoths tend to appear, they helped Alaric sack Rome in 410 and then faded from the story like a storm that passed through. But in reality, they didn’t vanish. They converted to orthodox Nicene Christianity (eventually), settled, governed and for over a century and a half built a Christian kingdom in Spain, one that developed its own liturgy, theology and sacred aesthetic. That kingdom, once powerful enough to host ecumenical councils and produce some of the finest goldsmithing in post-Roman Europe, collapsed almost overnight in 711, when Muslim armies crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and defeated the last Visigothic king. The Christian kingdom of Spain disappeared, and its remnants and refugees fled.

In today’s post for all subscribers, we’re turning west - far west - to explore what happened to Christian sacred art in Visigothic Spain. This often-overlooked kingdom, briefly powerful, deeply Christian and artistically distinct, was building its own sacred culture when it was suddenly extinguished. Before that moment, Spain had its own councils, its own churches, its own treasures offered in gold and stone. It even had a court and legal culture shaped by theology. And then, in the space of a few years, it was all gone.

By the end of the 7th century, Imperial Rome was a distant memory and Western Europe had splintered into a mosaic of kingdoms. We’ve talked about the Lombards in Italy, the Merovingians in Gaul, and the continuing Eastern influence in Rome and southern Italy, but what about the furthest Mediterranean edge of the old empire? What about Spain? We might forget that before the coming of Islam, Spain was the centre of a Christian kingdom, ruled not by Romans but by Visigoths who had arrived from eastern Europe in the 4th and 5th centuries. And for a brief time, this Visigothic kingdom had begun to forge a sacred culture of its own: Christian, Latin, and increasingly orthodox (that is, Nicene) Christians.

Then one day, across the narrow strait of Gibraltar came a Muslim force led by Tariq ibn Ziyad, under orders from the Umayyad caliph in Damascus. The Visigoths, fractured by internal rivalries and recent civil war, were unprepared. Five of the 25 kings who ruled between 470 and 710 were assassinated, five were dethroned and five had to face a conspiracy. King Roderic of Spain, last of the Visigothic kings, whose legitimacy was contested even before the invasion, met the army in battle near the Guadalete River. (Read more.)

Share