Alaric II

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Alaric II
Arian Christianity

Alaric II (

King of the Visigoths from 484 until 507. He succeeded his father Euric as King of the Visigoths in Toulouse on 28 December 484;[2] he was the great-grandson of the more famous Alaric I, who sacked Rome in 410. He established his capital at Aire-sur-l'Adour (Vicus Julii) in Aquitaine. His dominions included not only the majority of Hispania (excluding its northwestern corner) but also Gallia Aquitania and the greater part of an as-yet undivided Gallia Narbonensis
.

Reign

Herwig Wolfram opens his chapter on the eighth Visigothic king, "Alaric's reign gets no full treatment in the sources, and the little they do contain is overshadowed by his death in the Battle of Vouillé and the downfall of the Toulosan kingdom."[3] One example is Isidore of Seville's account of Alaric's reign: consisting of a single paragraph, it is primarily about Alaric's death in that battle.[4]

The earliest-documented event in Alaric's reign concerned providing refuge to

Domain of Soissons (in what is now northwestern France) who had been defeated by Clovis I, King of the Franks. According to Gregory of Tours' account, Alaric was intimidated by Clovis into surrendering Syagrius to Clovis; Gregory then adds that "the Goths are a timorous race." The Franks then imprisoned Syagrius, and once his control over Syagrius' former kingdom was secure, Clovis had him beheaded.[5] However, Wolfram points out that at the time "Clovis got no farther than the Seine; only after several more years did the Franks succeed in occupying the rest of the Gallo-Roman buffer state north of the Loire." Any threat of war Clovis could make would only be effective if they were neighbors; "it is nowhere written that Syagrius was handed over in 486 or 487."[3]

Despite Frankish advances in the years that followed, Alaric was not afraid to take the military initiative when it presented itself. In 490, Alaric assisted his fellow Gothic king, Theodoric the Great, in his conquest of Italy by dispatching an army to raise Odoacer's siege of Pavia, where Theodoric had been trapped.[6] Then when the Franks attacked the Burgundians in the decade after 500, Alaric assisted the ruling house, and according to Wolfram the victorious Burgundian king Gundobad ceded Avignon to Alaric.[7] By 502 Clovis and Alaric met on an island in the Loire near Amboise for face-to-face talks, which led to a peace treaty.[8]

In 506, the

Dertosa in the Ebro valley. There they captured the Roman usurper Peter and had him executed.[9]

Battle of Vouillé and aftermath

The Kingdom of the Visigoths under Alaric II

After a few years, however, Clovis violated the peace treaty negotiated in 502. Despite the diplomatic intervention of Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths and father-in-law of Alaric, Clovis led his followers into Visigothic territory. Alaric was forced by his magnates to meet Clovis in the Battle of Vouillé (summer 507) near Poitiers; there the Goths were defeated and Alaric slain, according to Gregory of Tours, by Clovis himself.[10]

The most serious consequence of this battle was not the loss of their possessions in

Leovigild assumed the throne in 569.[13]

Ability as king

In religion Alaric was an

Catholics and authorized them to hold in 506 the council of Agde.[14] He was on uneasy terms with the Catholic bishops of Arelate (modern Arles) as epitomized in the career of the Gallo-Roman Caesarius, bishop of Arles, who was appointed bishop in 503. Caesarius was suspected of conspiring with the Burgundians, whose king had married the sister of Clovis, to assist the Burgundians capture Arles. Alaric exiled him for a year to Bordeaux in Aquitania, then allowed him to return unharmed when the crisis had passed.[15]

Alaric displayed similar wisdom in political affairs by appointing a commission headed by the referendary Anianus to prepare an abstract of the Roman laws and imperial decrees, which would form the authoritative code for his Roman subjects. This is generally known as the Breviarium Alaricianum or Breviary of Alaric.[14]

Legacy

Speculative portrait by Carlos Esquivel y Rivas, 1856

The Montagne d'Alaric [fr] (Alaric's Mountain), near Carcassonne, is named after the Visigoth king.[16] Local rumour has it that he left a vast treasure buried in the caves beneath the mountain.[17]

The Canal d'Alaric [fr] (Alaric's Canal) in the Hautes-Pyrénées department is named after him.[18]

References

  1. ^ Kelsie B. Harder, Names and their varieties: a collection of essays in onomastics, American Name Society, University Press of America, 1984, pp. 10–11
  2. ^ Herwig Wolfram, History of the Goths, translated by Thomas J. Dunlap (Berkeley: University of California, 1988), p. 190.
  3. ^ a b Wolfram, History of the Goths, p. 191
  4. ^ Isidore of Seville, Historia de regibus Gothorum, Vandalorum et Suevorum, chapter 36. Translation by Guido Donini and Gordon B. Ford, Isidore of Seville's History of the Goths, Vandals, and Suevi, second revised edition (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970), pp. 17f
  5. ^ a b Gregory of Tours, Decem Libri Historiarum, II.27; translated by Lewis Thorpe, History of the Franks (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974), p. 139
  6. ^ Wolfram, History of the Goths, pp. 281f
  7. ^ Wolfram, History of the Goths, p. 291
  8. ^ Gregory of Tours (1976). A History of the Franks (trans. Lewis Thorpe ed.). Penguin. p. 150.
  9. ^ Collins, Roger. Visigothic Spain, 409–711. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004, p. 35.
  10. ^ Wolfram, History of the Goths, pp. 292f
  11. ^ Wolfram, History of the Goths, p. 245
  12. ^ Peter Heather, The Goths (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), p. 215
  13. ^ Heather, The Goths, p. 277
  14. ^ a b  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Alaric II.". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 1 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 472.
  15. ^ "Wace, Dictionary".
  16. ^ "The legend of the treasure of Alaric". Archived from the original on 27 December 2017. Retrieved 12 March 2015.
  17. ^ Montagne d’Alaric Archived 2 April 2015 at the Wayback Machine
  18. ^ Theodoric the Goth: the barbarian champion of civilisation by Hodgkin, Thomas, 1891 New York : G.P. Putnam's Son pg. 239

Further reading

King Alaric II of the Visigoths
Balti dynasty
 Died: 507
Regnal titles
Preceded by
King of the Visigoths

28 December 484 – August 507 		Succeeded by
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