Paganism And Pagan Survivals In Spain Up To The Fall Of The Visigothic Kingdom

Paganism and Pagan Survivals in Spain Up to the Fall of the Visigothic Kingdom

The Visigothic Kingdom in Iberia

The structures of the late ancient Visigothic kingdom of Iberia were rooted in those of Roman Hispania, Santiago Castellanos argues, but Catholic bishops subsequently produced a narrative of process and power from the episcopal point of view that became the official record and primary documentation for all later historians. The delineation of these two discrete projects—of construction and invention—form the core of The Visigothic Kingdom in Iberia. Castellanos reads documents of the period that are little known to many Anglophone scholars, including records of church councils, sermons, and letters, and utilizes archaeological findings to determine how the political system of elites related to local communities, and how the documentation they created promoted an ideological agenda. Looking particularly at the archaeological record, he finds that rural communities in the region were complex worlds unto themselves, with clear internal social stratification little recognized by the literate elites.

Law and Society in the Visigothic Kingdom

The kingdom of the Visigoths, embracing at its fullest extent Portugal and part of southern France as well as virtually the whole of Spain, boasted the most sophisticated civilization to be be found in any of the Romano-barbarian states created out of the ruin of the Western Empire. Yet its fortunes have been the subject of a curious indifference by scholars otherwise well conscious of the supreme significance of the sixth and seventh centuries for a balanced understanding of the Middle Ages. Dr King makes a searching investigation into the structure and ethos of Visigothic society as it is revealed in the legal and other other sources of the time.