Wamba (king)
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Wamba | |
---|---|
King of the Visigoths | |
Reign | 1 September 672 – 14 October 680 |
Predecessor | Recceswinth |
Successor | Erwig |
Born | c. 630 Visigothic Kingdom |
Died | 687/688 Visigothic Kingdom |
Wamba (
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History
Military events
After ascending the throne on 1 September 672, Wamba faced a revolt from
During these events, Wamba was in Cantabria campaigning against the Basques.[4] In response, Wamba marched into the Tarraconensis region, and in a few days turned most of the cities back to his side. He then divided his forces into three groups, attacking over the Pyrenees by way of Llívia (then the capital of Cerdanya), Auch, and the coastal road, taking the fortresses of Collioure, Vulturaria, and Llívia, finding "much" gold and silver there.[5]
As Wamba moved on Narbonne, Paul placed General Wittimer in charge of the city and retired to Nîmes. Wamba's forces quickly subdued Narbonne and then, after some difficulty, secured the surrender of Nîmes on September 3, 673. Paul and the other rebel leaders surrendered and, three days later, were brought to trial, scalped, and imprisoned for life.
A period of peace followed and, in 674, Wamba rebuilt the
After the rebellion, the kingdom faced a new threat in the form of Saracen raiders. In the Chronicle of Alfonso III (written 200 years later) it stated, "In Wamba's time, 270 Saracen ships attacked the coast of Hispania and there all of them were burned." A single attack of this size is doubtful, however, because no other source mentions it. The Chronicle of 754 declared Moors "had long been raiding" Andalusia, "and simultaneously devastating many cities"; however, the Chronicle of 754's most recent English translator, Kenneth Baxter Wolf, holds that this refers to the year before the defeat of King Roderic by the Moors, over three decades after the removal of Wamba.[7]
The law books and decrees of the time reveal a substantial erosion of domestic tranquility and order within the kingdom. In the Visigothic law books, Wamba decrees that all the people, regardless of their religion, and even if they are clergy, are required to defend the kingdom if it is attacked by a foreign foe. This law was created to solve a problem of desertion: "For, whenever an enemy invades the provinces of our kingdom … [many of] those who inhabit the border … disappear so that, by this means, there is no mutual support in battle." This rationale may imply a frequency of raids. That the people were often unwilling to defend the kingdom is further shown by another of Wamba's edicts, in which slaves were freed in order to the fill the ranks of the army. This suggests not only a shortage of volunteers from among the Hispano-Romans who made up the bulk of the population ruled by the Visigothic lords, but also an army heavy in conscripts and the coerced.
Religious events
In 675, the Third Council of Braga was held in
Wamba was a reformist king who, according to Charles Julian Bishko, "tried to set up at Aquis (Chaves) in Gallaecia a monastic see of the same type as Dume–Braga, i. e., involving the sort of episcopus sub regula associated with early pactualism. This manoeuvre was successfully blocked by the metropolitan church of Emérita with the full support of the fathers of the XIIth Council of Toledo (681)."[8]
Succession
In 680, Wamba fell ill or (according to the Chronicle of Alfonso III two hundred years later) was poisoned in Pampliega, near Burgos. He received the order of penance in anticipation of his death, and as a result was forced to step down as king upon his recovery. The Chronicle of Alfonso III blames Wamba's successor Erwig for this; some modern commentators have blamed Julian of Toledo, who was made primate of the Visigothic church by Erwig (in reward for his services?).[9] But Julian perpetuated the memory of Wamba in his account of the revolt of Paul, Historia Wambae Regís.
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Birthplace
According to one tradition, Wamba was born in
However, the most famous tradition says he held land and possessions in Pujerra[12] (or Buxarra as it was once called) in Málaga Province, an Andalusian mountain village, nestled amid forests of chestnut trees near the Genil river in southern Spain. The ruins of Molino de Capilla (Mill of the Chapel) are nearby, and close to which lay the village of Cenay, which some consider to be Wamba's actual birthplace.
Kingship
There are at least two legends associated with how Wamba became king.
One legend[13][failed verification] begins with Wamba's father, king of the Visigoths, who in this story was also named Wamba. Two women of his court, a servant girl and a noble lady, became pregnant at the same time. To avoid a scandal that might implicate the king, both women fled the capital. They found their way to an Andalusian village that, because it was so well hidden in the forest, provided an ideal place for secret births. Both women brought forth boys, and they were placed in the care of a servant girl to be raised in the area.
When the time came to groom a successor for the king, there seemed to be no suitable heir. Soldiers were dispatched to the village to find the illegitimate children. After their arrival, they overheard a peasant woman call to her son named Wamba, who was tending cattle with a stick. The soldiers knew they had come upon the youth they sought and declared: "You are the rightful king and we must ask you to come with us to the palace." Wamba was unwilling, or at least pretended to be. He took his stick and thrust it into the ground, saying, "I will only accept the throne if this stick takes root." The stick he carried was of chopo or
A second legend is related by Charles Morris in Historical Tales: Spanish ("The Good King Wamba"). In this version, instead of being a boy, Wamba was an old man in the village, and owned land and possessions there. According to Morris:
In those days, when a king died and left no son, the Goths elected a new one, seeking their best and worthiest, and holding the election in the place where the old king had died. It was in the little village of Gerticos, some eight miles from the city of Valladolid, that King Recesuinto had sought health and found death. Hither came the electors—the great nobles, the bishops, and the generals—and here they debated who should be king, finally settling on a venerable Goth named Wamba, the one man of note in all the kingdom who throughout his life had declined to accept rank and station.[14]
Saint Leo, declaring he had been given divine guidance, instructed the electors to seek out a husbandman named Wamba. So scouts were dispersed until Wamba was found tilling one of his fields. "Leave your plough in the furrow", they said to him; "nobler work awaits you. You have been elected king of Hispania." "There is no nobler work", answered Wamba. "Seek elsewhere your monarch. I prefer to rule over my fields."[14]
The heralds did not know what to make of this. To them, the man who would not be king must be a saint—or an idiot. They reasoned, begged and implored until Wamba, who wanted to get rid of them, said: "I will accept the crown when the dry rod in my hand grows green again—and not till then."[14]
After he thrust it into the ground, all were astonished to see it suddenly become a green plant with leaves growing out of the top. Everyone believed heaven had decided the matter. So Wamba "went with the heralds to the electoral congress". Once there, however, he again tried to refuse the throne. At this, one of the Visigothic chieftains drew his sword and threatened to behead Wamba if he did not accept the crown. Wamba relented and consented.[14]
The legend of the stick thrust into the ground is also associated with the town of Guimarães, southwest of Braga in the Costa Verde of Portugal (the northwest corner of the country). There, because Wamba never withdrew the stick afterwards, it is said it grew into an olive tree. Though the tree is now gone, the site is marked either by the monastery of Nossa Senhora da Oliveira (Our Lady of the Olive) or the Largo da Oliveira town square, each named for the legendary tree.
Saint Giles
In a 10th-century Life of Saint Giles, written for the benefit of pilgrims, a legend is recorded about how, one day, when King Wamba (also known as Flavius) was out hunting in the forest between Arles and Nîmes in Provence, he began to pursue a hind (deer). The animal fled, seeking refuge in the cave where Giles the hermit was quietly praying. (In some versions of the story, the hind, provided by God, was Giles' sole companion and sustained him on its milk.) Wamba shot his arrow into the opening. But he missed the hind, striking Giles instead, wounding him in the leg and causing a permanent disability. The king's hunting dogs then rushed in for the kill. But when Wamba arrived he found his dogs miraculously rooted to the spot. Discovering what he had done, he begged forgiveness and tried to make amends. But Giles continued his prayers, refusing all help or recompense. The king nonetheless had doctors care for the wound. He also offered Giles the land upon which to build a monastery. But Giles refused.
Over time, however, because of the saint's fame as a sage and miracle worker, multitudes gathered at his cave. Around 674, Wamba built them a monastery. Giles became its first abbot. Soon a little town grew up there, known as Saint-Gilles-du-Gard.
Because of this tradition, Giles became the patron saint of cripples, lepers, and nursing mothers. His emblem is an arrow. The Catholic Encyclopedia noted that the king in this story must have originally been a Frank, "since the Franks had expelled the Visigoths from the neighbourhood of Nîmes almost a century and a half earlier".[15]
Loss of the crown
Charles Morris writes that, during Wamba's reign:
One ambitious noble named Paul, who thought it would be an easy thing to take the throne from an old man who had shown so plainly that he did not want it, rose in rebellion. He soon learned his mistake. Wamba met him in battle, routed his army, and took him prisoner. Paul expected nothing less than to have his head stricken off, but Wamba simply ordered that it should be shaved.[14]
A shaved or tonsured head meant that Paul had assumed monastic orders, so he could not serve as king or chieftain.[14]
Later an ambitious youth named Erwig, pursuing the overthrow of the king, administered a
According to Morris, Wamba acquitted himself well in all his stations—farmer, king, and monk—and his name has come down to us from the mists of time as one of those rare men of whom we know little, but all that we know is good.[14]
Ironically, it was Wamba's nephew, son of his sister Ariberga,
Bibliography
- Charles Julian Bishko, "Portuguese Pactual Monasticism in the Eleventh Century: The Case of São Salvador De Vacariça", Estudos de História de Portugal: Homenagen a A.H. de Oliveira Margues (Lisbon: Editorial Estampa, 1982).[ISBN missing]
- Henry Bradley, The Goths: from the Earliest Times to the End of the Gothic Dominion in Spain, chapter 33. Second edition, 1883, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.
- Julian of Toledo, Historia Wambae regís, in Mon. Ger. Hist., Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum, V, 486–535; and cf. Dahn, Könige der Germanen, V, 207–12, 217–18; R. Altamira, Cambridge Medieval History, II, 179.
- Charles Morris, Historical Tales, the Romance of Reality: Spanish. 1898, Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company.
- Manuel de Sousa da Silva, Nobiliário das Gerações de Entre-Douro-e-Minho
See also
Notes
- ^ History of the Goths, trans. Thomas J. Dunlap (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), p. 463 n. 326
- ^ Historia Wambae Regis auctore Juliano episcopo Toletano, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptorum rerum Merovingicarum tomus V, Passiones Vitaeque Sanctorum Aevi Merovingici, pp. 504–07.
- Catholicism) had dedicated to the body of St. Felix in Girona. Historia Wambae Regis in MGH, Scriptorum rerum Merovingicarum t. V, p. 522.
- ^ Historia Wambae Regis in MGH, Scriptorum rerum Merovingicarum t. V, p. 507. Roger Collins, The Basques (2nd ed., 1990, Blackwell: Cambridge, Mass.) points out that "there exists a measure of looseness about the use of the name of Cantabria" both before and after Wamba's time, so it could include a wider area than at present. See Collins, pp. 92–93, 138–39.
- ^ Historia Wambae Regis in MGH, Scriptorum rerum Merovingicarum t. V, pp. 509–11.
- ^ Sanchez, Santiago; Zulueta, Alberto; Barrallo, Javier (2009). "CAAD and Historical Buildings: The Importance of the Simulation of the Historical Process". The University of the Basque Country. Archived from the original on 2016-03-03. Retrieved 2005-09-04.
- ISBN 978-0853235545The Chronicle of 754 mentions Wamba's building projects in Toledo and the Eleventh Council of Toledo, but does not identify any Muslim raids in his time.
- ^ Bishko, Charles Julian (1982). "Spanish and Portuguese Monastic History 600–1300 IV". Portuguese Pactual Monasticism in the Eleventh Century: The Case of Sao Salvador De Vacariça. Archived from the original on 5 February 2012. Retrieved 11 September 2014 – via The Library of Iberian Resources Online.
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ignored (help) - ^ See Wolf, tr., Conquerors and Chroniclers, pp. 162–63; Roger Collins, Early Medieval Spain; Unity in Diversity, 400–1000, 2nd edition, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995, pp. 77–78, regards this as "quite unnecessarily Machiavellian."[ISBN missing]
- ^ "Archaeological Monuments and Sites: Architectural and Archaeological Set of Idanha-a-Velha". IPPAR. Archived from the original on 2005-02-05.
- ^ "Dozón: Historical Aspects". CRTVG. Archived from the original on 2004-12-20.
- ^ "Pujerra". canales.diariosur.es. Archived from the original on 2004-04-17. Retrieved 2005-08-31.
- ^ Wawn, Chris; Gill, John (August 5, 2011). "Pujerra". Andalucia.com. Archived from the original on April 14, 2022. Retrieved June 10, 2022.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Morris, Charles. "Historical Tales: Spanish "The Good King Wamba"". Gateway to the Classics. Archived from the original on 2021-01-25. Retrieved 2019-05-18.
- ^ "Catholic Encyclopedia: St. Giles". www.newadvent.org. Archived from the original on 2021-11-23. Retrieved 2022-06-10.