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103-507: Ardo (or Ardonus , possibly short for Ardabastus ; died 720/721) is the last attested king of the Visigoths , reigning from 713 or 714 until his death in 720 or 721. The Visigothic Kingdom was already severely reduced in power and area at the time he succeeded Achila II , and his dominions probably did not extend beyond Septimania and present-day Catalonia , due to the Arab conquests of

206-731: A sermo Theotiscus ('Germanic language'), the language of the Gothic translation of the Bible, and that they used such a liturgy. Many writers of the medieval texts that mention the Goths used the word Goths to mean any Germanic people in eastern Europe (such as the Varangians ), many of whom certainly did not use the Gothic language as known from the Gothic Bible. Some writers even referred to Slavic -speaking people as "Goths". However, it

309-441: A stress accent rather than the pitch accent of Proto-Indo-European . This is indicated by the shortening of long vowels [eː] and [oː] and the loss of short vowels [a] and [i] in unstressed final syllables. Just as in other Germanic languages, the free moving Proto-Indo-European accent was replaced with one fixed on the first syllable of simple words. Accents do not shift when words are inflected. In most compound words,

412-644: A Visigothic nobleman called Pelagius was elected princeps and became the leader of the Astures and of the Visigoths who had taken refuge in mountains. The Visigoths and their early kings were Arians and came into conflict with the Church in Rome, but after they converted to Nicene Christianity , the Church exerted an enormous influence on secular affairs through the Councils of Toledo . The Visigoths also developed

515-604: A church language when the Visigoths renounced Arianism in 589). This newfound unity found expression in increasingly severe persecution of outsiders, especially the Jews . The Visigothic Code , completed in 654, abolished the old tradition of having different laws for Hispano-Romans and for Visigoths. The 7th century saw many civil wars between factions of the aristocracy. Despite good records left by contemporary bishops, such as Isidore and Leander of Seville , it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish Goths from Hispano-Romans, as

618-554: A civil war ensued between them. Hermenegild became the first Visigothic king to convert to Nicene Christianity due to his ties with the Romans, but he was defeated in 584 and killed in 585. By the end of his reign, Liuvigild had united the entire Iberian peninsula, including the Suebic Kingdom which he conquered in 585 during a Suebi civil war that ensued after the death of King Miro . Liuvigild established amicable terms with

721-516: A conspiracy, and many were enslaved, especially those who had converted from Christianity. Egica also raised his son Wittiza as coruler in 698. Not much is known about his reign, but a period of civil war quickly ensued between his sons (Achila and Ardo) and King Roderic, who had seized Toledo. In 711, Tariq ibn Ziyad, a Muslim Berber client of Musa bin Nusair , the governor of Islamic Africa, invaded Spain with about 7,000 Berber men, while Roderic

824-510: A dynasty, the Balti . The Visigothic monarchy took on a completely elective character with the fall of the Balti, but the monarchy remained Arian until Reccared I converted in 587 (Hermenegild had also converted earlier). Only a few sons succeeded their fathers to the throne in this period. Gothic language Gothic is an extinct East Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths . It

927-647: A fact which Odoacer formally accepted in a treaty. By 500, the Visigothic Kingdom, centered at Toulouse , controlled Gallia Aquitania and Gallia Narbonensis and most of Hispania with the exception of the Suebic Kingdom of Galicia in the northwest and small areas controlled by independent Iberian peoples, such as the Basques and the Cantabrians . Euric's son Alaric II (484–507) issued

1030-428: A former perfect); three grammatical moods : indicative , subjunctive (from an old optative form) and imperative as well as three kinds of nominal forms: a present infinitive , a present participle , and a past passive . Not all tenses and persons are represented in all moods and voices, as some conjugations use auxiliary forms . Finally, there are forms called 'preterite-present': the old Indo-European perfect

1133-403: A highly educated nobleman was king Sisebut , who was a patron of learning and writer of poems, one of them about astronomy. These kings and leaders – with the exception of Fritigern and possibly Alavivus – were pagans. These kings were Arians (followers of the theological teaching of Arius ). They tended to succeed their fathers or close relatives on the throne and thus constitute

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1236-582: A language of considerable interest in comparative linguistics . Only a few documents in Gothic have survived – not enough for a complete reconstruction of the language. Most Gothic-language sources are translations or glosses of other languages (namely, Greek ), so foreign linguistic elements most certainly influenced the texts. These are the primary sources: Reports of the discovery of other parts of Ulfilas's Bible have not been substantiated. Heinrich May in 1968 claimed to have found in England twelve leaves of

1339-583: A new body of laws, the Breviarium Alarici , and held a church council at Agde . The Visigoths now came into conflict with the Franks under their King Clovis I , who had conquered northern Gaul. Following a brief war with the Franks, Alaric was forced to put down a rebellion in Tarraconensis, probably caused by recent Visigoth immigration to Hispania due to pressure from the Franks. In 507,

1442-607: A new offensive. Reccared's son Liuva II became king in 601 but was deposed by the Visigothic noble Witteric (603–610), ending the short-lived dynasty. There were various Visigothic Kings between 610 and 631, and this period saw constant regicide. This period also saw the definitive conquest of the Byzantine territories in the south. War continued in the north against the Basques and Asturians , as indeed it would continue for

1545-405: A palace complex and mint, but it lay in ruins by the 9th century (after the Arab conquest). At a slightly later date, Liuvigild founded a city he named Victoriacum after his victory over the Basques. Though it is often supposed to survive as the city of Vitoria , contemporary 12th-century sources refer to the latter city's foundation by Sancho VI of Navarre . Liuvigild's son and namesake of

1648-737: A palimpsest containing parts of the Gospel of Matthew . Only fragments of the Gothic translation of the Bible have been preserved. The translation was apparently done in the Balkans region by people in close contact with Greek Christian culture. The Gothic Bible apparently was used by the Visigoths in Occitania until the loss of Visigothic Occitania at the start of the 6th century, in Visigothic Iberia until about 700, and perhaps for

1751-409: A possible fifth city is ascribed to them by a later Arabic source. All of these cities were founded for military purposes and three of them in celebration of victory. The first, Reccopolis , was founded by Liuvigild in 578 after his victory over the Franks, near what is today the tiny village of Zorita de los Canes . He named it after his son Reccared and built it with Byzantine imitations, containing

1854-423: A revolt by the army and by Gallo-Romans under Aegidius; as a result, Romans under Severus and the Visigoths fought other Roman troops, and the revolt ended only in 465. In 466, Euric , who was the youngest son of Theodoric I , came to the Visigothic throne. He is infamous for murdering his elder brother Theodoric II who had himself become king by murdering his elder brother Thorismund . Under Euric (466–484),

1957-548: A theologian and poet who, after he had fled to the Frankish kingdom, participated in the Carolingian Renaissance . A Muslim source referred to Visigothic Seville as the "abode of the sciences". The Institutionum disciplinae from the mid seventh/early eight century confirms that Visigothic nobles were not only taught in reading and writing but also in science, medicine, law and philosophy. An example of

2060-456: A time in Italy, the Balkans, and Ukraine until at least the mid-9th century. During the extermination of Arianism , Trinitarian Christians probably overwrote many texts in Gothic as palimpsests, or alternatively collected and burned Gothic documents. Apart from biblical texts, the only substantial Gothic document that still exists – and the only lengthy text known to have been composed originally in

2163-519: Is the verb "to be" , which is athematic in Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, and many other Indo-European languages. Gothic verbs are, like nouns and adjectives, divided into strong verbs and weak verbs. Weak verbs are characterised by preterites formed by appending the suffixes -da or -ta , parallel to past participles formed with -þ / -t . Strong verbs form preterites by ablaut (the alternating of vowels in their root forms) or by reduplication (prefixing

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2266-654: Is a part of the Indo-European language family. It is the earliest Germanic language that is attested in any sizable texts, but it lacks any modern descendants. The oldest documents in Gothic date back to the fourth century. The language was in decline by the mid-sixth century, partly because of the military defeat of the Goths at the hands of the Franks , the elimination of the Goths in Italy, and geographic isolation (in Spain,

2369-420: Is an allophone of the others, all found only in complementary distribution with them. Nasals in Gothic, like most other languages, are pronounced at the same point of articulation as the consonant that follows them ( assimilation ). Therefore, clusters like [md] and [nb] are not possible. Accentuation in Gothic can be reconstructed through phonetic comparison, Grimm's law , and Verner's law . Gothic used

2472-473: Is clear from Ulfilas's translation that – despite some puzzles – the Gothic language belongs with the Germanic language-group, not with Slavic. Generally, the term "Gothic language" refers to the language of Ulfilas , but the attestations themselves date largely from the 6th century, long after Ulfilas had died. A few Gothic runic inscriptions were found across Europe, but due to early Christianization of

2575-591: Is clearly identifiable evidence from other branches that the Gothic form is a secondary development. Gothic fails to display a number of innovations shared by all Germanic languages attested later: The language also preserved many features that were mostly lost in other early Germanic languages: Most conspicuously, Gothic shows no sign of morphological umlaut. Gothic fotus , pl. fotjus , can be contrasted with English foot  : feet , German Fuß  : Füße , Old Norse fótr  : fœtr , Danish fod  : fødder . These forms contain

2678-492: Is fairly free as is typical of other inflected languages. The natural word order of Gothic is assumed to have been like that of the other old Germanic languages; however, nearly all extant Gothic texts are translations of Greek originals and have been heavily influenced by Greek syntax. Sometimes what can be expressed in one word in the original Greek will require a verb and a complement in the Gothic translation; for example, διωχθήσονται ( diōchthēsontai , "they will be persecuted")

2781-634: Is hard to separate the two) derived by the processes described in Grimm's law and Verner's law and characteristic of Germanic languages . Gothic is unusual among Germanic languages in having a /z/ phoneme, which has not become /r/ through rhotacization. Furthermore, the doubling of written consonants between vowels suggests that Gothic made distinctions between long and short, or geminated consonants: atta [atːa] "dad", kunnan [kunːan] "to know" (Dutch kennen , German kennen "to know", Icelandic kunna ). Gothic has three nasal consonants, one of which

2884-465: Is known primarily from the Codex Argenteus , a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizeable text corpus . All others, including Burgundian and Vandalic , are known, if at all, only from proper names that survived in historical accounts, and from loanwords in other, mainly Romance , languages. As a Germanic language, Gothic

2987-469: Is less significant in Gothic because of its conservative nature: the so-called "weak" declensions (those ending in n ) are, in fact, no weaker in Gothic (in terms of having fewer endings) than the "strong" declensions (those ending in a vowel), and the "strong" declensions do not form a coherent class that can be clearly distinguished from the "weak" declensions. Although descriptive adjectives in Gothic (as well as superlatives ending in -ist and -ost ) and

3090-411: Is rendered: Likewise Gothic translations of Greek noun phrases may feature a verb and a complement. In both cases, the verb follows the complement, giving weight to the theory that basic word order in Gothic is object–verb. This aligns with what is known of other early Germanic languages. However, this pattern is reversed in imperatives and negations: And in a wh -question the verb directly follows

3193-647: Is the preservation of the dual number , referring to two people or things; the plural was used only for quantities greater than two. Thus, "the two of us" and "we" for numbers greater than two were expressed as wit and weis respectively. While proto-Indo-European used the dual for all grammatical categories that took a number (as did Classical Greek and Sanskrit ), most Old Germanic languages are unusual in that they preserved it only for pronouns. Gothic preserves an older system with dual marking on both pronouns and verbs (but not nouns or adjectives). The simple demonstrative pronoun sa (neuter: þata , feminine: so , from

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3296-489: Is to be identified with modern Olite . The possible fifth Visigothic foundation is Baiyara (perhaps modern Montoro ), mentioned as founded by Reccared in the Geography of Kitab al-Rawd al-Mitar . The Visigothic rule has often been misattributed to be a part of the so-called Dark Ages , a time of supposedly cultural and scientific decay. Through the course of their existence the Visigoths supposedly remained "men of

3399-529: Is used for transliterating Gothic words into the Latin script . The system mirrors the conventions of the native alphabet, such as writing long /iː/ as ei . The Goths used their equivalents of e and o alone only for long higher vowels, using the digraphs ai and au (much as in French ) for the corresponding short or lower vowels. There are two variant spelling systems: a "raw" one that directly transliterates

3502-629: The Battle of Narbonne in 436, but then in 439 at the Battle of Toulouse the Visigoths defeated the allied forces of Romans and Huns. By 451, the situation had reversed and the Huns had invaded Gaul ; now Theodoric fought under Flavius Aetius against Attila the Hun in the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains . Attila was driven back, but Theodoric was killed in the battle. The Vandals completed

3605-601: The Garonne River between Bordeaux and Toulouse in Aquitaine during the 5th century, according to contemporary sources under the terms of the late Roman Empire as foederatii , or allies, and assigned billeting obligations to provide lodging for Roman soldiers, more or less as the imperial military had done in other provinces. Later in the century, following annexations made by King Euric in Gaul and Hispania once

3708-633: The Ostrogothic Kingdom , who invaded and defeated him at Barcelona . Gesalec fled and regrouped, but was defeated again at Barcelona , and was captured and killed. Theodoric then installed his grandson Amalaric (511–531), the son of Alaric II, as king. Amalaric, however, was still a child and power in Spain remained under the Ostrogothic general and regent, Theudis . Only after Theodoric's death (526) did Amalaric obtain control of his kingdom. His rule did not last long, as in 531, Amalaric

3811-844: The Province of Alicante ). Starting in the 570s Athanagild's brother Liuvigild compensated for this loss by conquering the Kingdom of the Suebi in Gallaecia (corresponding roughly to present-day Galicia and the northern part of Portugal ) and annexing it, and by repeated campaigns against the Basques . The ethnic distinction between the Hispano-Roman population and the Visigoths had largely disappeared by this time (the Gothic language lost its last and probably already declining function as

3914-647: The Regnum Tolosae or Kingdom of Toulouse after its capital Toulouse in modern historiography, the Visigothic kingdom lost much of its territory in Gaul to the Franks in the early 6th century, save the narrow coastal strip of Septimania . The kingdom of the 6th and 7th centuries is sometimes called the Regnum Toletanum or Kingdom of Toledo after the new capital of Toledo in Hispania. A civil war starting in 549 resulted in an invitation from

4017-565: The Rhone and the Loire rivers which comprised most of southern Gaul. He also occupied the key Roman cities of Arles and Marseilles . In his campaigns, Euric had counted on a portion of the Gallo-Roman and Hispano-Roman aristocracy who served under him as generals and governors. The Visigothic Kingdom was formally recognized as an independent kingdom in former Roman territory instead of having

4120-498: The past participle may take both definite and indefinite forms, some adjectival words are restricted to one variant. Some pronouns take only definite forms: for example, sama (English "same"), adjectives like unƕeila ("constantly", from the root ƕeila , "time"; compare to the English "while"), comparative adjective and present participles . Others, such as áins ("some"), take only the indefinite forms. The table below displays

4223-635: The wh- at the beginning of many English interrogative, which, as in Gothic, are pronounced with [ʍ] in some dialects. The same etymology is present in the interrogatives of many other Indo-European languages: w- [v] in German, hv- in Danish , the Latin qu- (which persists in modern Romance languages ), the Greek τ- or π-, the Slavic and Indic k- as well as many others. The bulk of Gothic verbs follow

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4326-510: The Franks attacked again, this time allied with the Burgundians . Alaric II was killed at the Battle of Campus Vogladensis ( Vouillé ) near Poitiers , and Toulouse was sacked. By 508, the Visigoths had lost most of their Gallic holdings save Septimania in the south. After Alaric II's death, his illegitimate son Gesalec took power until he was deposed by Theodoric the Great , ruler of

4429-473: The Franks through royal marriages, and they remained at peace throughout most of his reign. Liuvigild also founded new cities, such as Reccopolis and Victoriacum ( Vitoria ), the first barbarian king to do so. On becoming King, Liuvigild's son Reccared I (586–601) converted from Arian to Chalcedonian Christianity . This led to some unrest in the kingdom, notably a revolt by the Arian bishop of Mérida which

4532-485: The Gothic language lost its last and probably already declining function as a church language when the Visigoths converted from Arianism to Nicene Christianity in 589). The language survived as a domestic language in the Iberian Peninsula (modern-day Spain and Portugal) as late as the eighth century. Gothic-seeming terms are found in manuscripts subsequent to this date, but these may or may not belong to

4635-589: The Gothic language – is the Skeireins , a few pages of commentary on the Gospel of John . Very few medieval secondary sources make reference to the Gothic language after about 800. In De incrementis ecclesiae Christianae (840–842), Walafrid Strabo , a Frankish monk who lived in Swabia , writes of a group of monks who reported that even then certain peoples in Scythia ( Dobruja ), especially around Tomis , spoke

4738-577: The Goths, the Runic writing was quickly replaced by the newly invented Gothic alphabet. Ulfilas's Gothic, as well as that of the Skeireins and various other manuscripts, was written using an alphabet that was most likely invented by Ulfilas himself for his translation. Some scholars (such as Braune) claim that it was derived from the Greek alphabet only while others maintain that there are some Gothic letters of Runic or Latin origin. A standardized system

4841-530: The Greek of that period is well documented, it is possible to reconstruct much of Gothic pronunciation from translated texts. In addition, the way in which non-Greek names are transcribed in the Greek Bible and in Ulfilas's Bible is very informative. In general, Gothic consonants are devoiced at the ends of words. Gothic is rich in fricative consonants (although many of them may have been approximants ; it

4944-480: The Indo-European root *so , *seh 2 , *tod ; cognate to the Greek article ὁ, ἡ, τό and the Latin is tud ) can be used as an article, allowing constructions of the type definite article + weak adjective + noun . The interrogative pronouns begin with ƕ- , which derives from the proto-Indo-European consonant *kʷ that was present at the beginning of all interrogatives in proto-Indo-European, cognate with

5047-652: The Roman Empire of the West had collapsed, specially after the Battle of Vouille , many Goths and their federated peoples, such as the Vandals , Ostrogoths and Sarmatians , moved to settle more freely under their kindred clans' rulers, the reiks , who received dukedom territories or comital offices as counts over smaller territories or key urban locations within the provinces of Hispania and in southwestern Gaul and its Mediterranean coast. Their settlements were made around

5150-652: The Roman cities of Emerita Augusta (Mérida), Barcino (Barcelona), Hispalis (Seville), Toletum (Toledo) and Septimanian Narbonne, which would be the main bases of Gothic power politically as well as militarily during the rest of the kingdom's history, as well as other settlements that were dispersed in rural farming areas between the upper reaches of the Douro , Ebro and Tagus rivers, in an area between Tierra de Campos , also known as Campi Gothorum , around Central Castile and León and Rioja , and Toledo to

5253-548: The Roman order. Under King Euric —who eliminated the status of foederati—a triumphal advance of the Visigoths began. Alarmed at Visigoth expansion from Aquitania after victory over the Gallo-Roman and Breton armies at Déols in 469, Western Emperor Anthemius sent a fresh army across the Alps against Euric, who was besieging Arles . The Roman army was crushed in the Battle of Arles nearby and Euric then captured Arles and secured much of southern Gaul. Sometimes referred to as

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5356-534: The Vandals, Alans and Suebi. In 418, Honorius rewarded his Visigothic federates under King Wallia (reigned 415–418) by giving them land in the Garonne valley of Gallia Aquitania on which to settle. This probably took place under the system of hospitalitas . It seems likely that at first the Visigoths were not given a large amount of land estates in the region (as previously believed), but that they acquired

5459-530: The Visigoth Athanagild , who had usurped the kingship, to the Byzantine emperor Justinian I to send soldiers to his assistance. Athanagild won his war, but the Byzantines took over Cartagena and a good deal of southern Hispania, until 624 when Swinthila expelled the last Byzantine garrisons from the peninsula, occupying Orcelis , which the Visigoths called Aurariola (today Orihuela in

5562-591: The Visigothic capital, were heavily influenced by the contemporary Byzantine architecture. When the Muslims looted Spain during their conquest they were amazed by the fine and innumerable Visigothic treasures. A few of these treasures were preserved as they were buried during the Muslim invasions – e.g., the votive crowns from the treasure of Guarrazar . While only the senior monks were allowed to read books of non-Christian or heretic authors this did not prevent

5665-559: The Visigoths The Visigoths were romanized central Europeans who had moved west from the Danube Valley . They became foederati of Rome, and wanted to restore the Roman order against the hordes of Vandals , Alans and Suebi . The Western Roman Empire fell in 476 AD; therefore, the Visigoths believed they had the right to take the territories that Rome had promised in Hispania in exchange for restoring

5768-693: The Visigoths began expanding in Gaul and consolidating their presence in the Iberian peninsula. Euric fought a series of wars with the Suebi who retained some influence in Lusitania and brought most of this region under Visigothic power, taking Emerita Augusta ( Mérida ) in 469. Euric also attacked the Western Roman Empire, capturing Hispania Tarraconensis in 472, the last bastion of (Western) Roman rule in Spain. By 476, he had extended his rule to

5871-414: The cities in Gallaecia, part of the Suebi Kingdom quite brutally: they massacred a portion of the population and even attacked some holy places, probably due to the clergy's support of the Suebi. Theodoric took control over Hispania Baetica , Carthaginiensis and southern Lusitania . In 461, the Goths received the city of Narbonne from the emperor Libius Severus in exchange for their support. This led to

5974-426: The conquest of North Africa when they took Carthage on October 19, 439, and the Suebi had taken most of Hispania. The Roman emperor Avitus now sent the Visigoths into Hispania. Theodoric II (453–466) invaded and defeated the king of the Suebi, Rechiarius , at the battle on the river Órbigo in 456 near Asturica Augusta ( Astorga ) and then sacked Bracara Augusta ( Braga ), the Suebi capital. The Goths sacked

6077-410: The correspondence between spelling and sound for consonants: It is possible to determine more or less exactly how the Gothic of Ulfilas was pronounced, primarily through comparative phonetic reconstruction. Furthermore, because Ulfilas tried to follow the original Greek text as much as possible in his translation, it is known that he used the same writing conventions as those of contemporary Greek. Since

6180-466: The declension of the Gothic adjective blind (English: "blind"), compared with the an -stem noun guma "man, human" and the a -stem noun dags "day": This table is, of course, not exhaustive. (There are secondary inflexions of various sorts not described here.) An exhaustive table of only the types of endings that Gothic took is presented below. Gothic adjectives follow noun declensions closely; they take same types of inflection. Gothic inherited

6283-416: The definite determiners (such as the definite article sa / þata / sō ) while indefinite adjectives are used in other circumstances., Indefinite adjectives generally use a combination of a -stem and ō -stem endings, and definite adjectives use a combination of an -stem and ōn -stem endings. The concept of "strong" and "weak" declensions that is prevalent in the grammar of many other Germanic languages

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6386-462: The east and south. After the fall of the Galician Kingdom of the Suebi , some further settlements were made along the Tagus river north of Lisbon , by Oporto and Astorga former strongholds of the Suebi . Little Visigothic settlement occurred elsewhere in the kingdom. The Visigoths founded the only new cities in Western Europe between the fifth and eighth centuries. It is certain (through contemporary Spanish accounts) that they founded four, and

6489-480: The end of a word, to their voiced form; another such example is wileid-u "do you ( pl. ) want" from wileiþ "you ( pl. ) want". If the first word has a preverb attached, the clitic actually splits the preverb from the verb: ga-u-láubjats "do you both believe...?" from galáubjats "you both believe". Another such clitic is -uh "and", appearing as -h after a vowel: ga-h-mēlida "and he wrote" from gamēlida "he wrote", urreis nim-uh "arise and take!" from

6592-405: The first Visigothic city founded his own sometime around 600. It is referred to by Isidore of Seville as Lugo id est Luceo in the Asturias , built after a victory over the Asturians or Cantabri . The fourth and possibly final city of the Goths was Ologicus (perhaps Ologitis ), founded using Basque labour in 621 by Swinthila as a fortification against the recently subjected Basques. It

6695-443: The full set of Indo-European pronouns: personal pronouns (including reflexive pronouns for each of the three grammatical persons ), possessive pronouns , both simple and compound demonstratives , relative pronouns , interrogatives and indefinite pronouns . Each follows a particular pattern of inflection (partially mirroring the noun declension), much like other Indo-European languages. One particularly noteworthy characteristic

6798-431: The governor of Ifriqiya , arrived with another army of 18,000, with large Arab contingents. He took Mérida in 713 and invaded the north, taking Saragossa and León , which were still under King Ardo, in 714. After being recalled by the Caliph , Musa left his son Abd al-'Aziz in command. By 716, most of the Iberian Peninsula was under Islamic rule, with Septimania taken between 721 and 725. The only effective resistance

6901-482: The highly influential legal code known in Western Europe as the Visigothic Code ( Latin : Liber Iudiciorum ), which would become the basis for Spanish law throughout the Middle Ages . From 407 to 409 AD, an alliance of Germanic Vandals , Iranian Alans and Germanic Suebi crossed the frozen Rhine and swept across modern France and into the Iberian Peninsula. For their part, the Visigoths under Alaric famously sacked Rome in 410 , capturing Galla Placidia ,

7004-561: The imperative form nim "take". After iþ or any indefinite besides sums "some" and anþar "another", - uh cannot be placed; in the latter category, this is only because indefinite determiner phrases cannot move to the front of a clause. Unlike, for example, Latin - que , - uh can only join two or more main clauses. In all other cases, the word jah "and" is used, which can also join main clauses. More than one such clitics can occur in one word: diz-uh-þan-sat ijōs "and then he seized them ( fem. )" from dissat "he seized" (notice again

7107-423: The king, replacing him with Chintila (636–639). The church councils were now the most powerful institution in the Visigothic state; they took the role of regulating the process of succession to the kingship by election of the king by Gothic noble 'senators' and the church officials. They also decided to meet on a regular basis to discuss ecclesiastical and political matters affecting the Church. Finally, they decided

7210-415: The kings should die in peace, and declared their persons sacred, seeking to end the violence and regicides of the past. Despite all this, another coup took place and Chintila was deposed in 639, and King Tulga took his place; he was also deposed in the third year of his reign and the council elected the noble Chindaswinth as king. The reigns of Chindaswinth and his son Recceswinth saw the compilation of

7313-415: The location of the stress depends on the type of compound: For example, with comparable words from modern Germanic languages: Gothic preserves many archaic Indo-European features that are not always present in modern Germanic languages, in particular the rich Indo-European declension system. Gothic had nominative , accusative , genitive and dative cases , as well as vestiges of a vocative case that

7416-478: The monarchy at the expense of the nobility; he executed some 700 nobles, forced dignitaries to swear oaths, and in the seventh council of Toledo laid down his right to excommunicate clergy who acted against the government. He was also able to maneuver his son Recceswinth on the throne, sparking a rebellion by a Gothic noble who allied with the Basques, but was put down. Recceswinth (653–672) held another council of Toledo, which reduced sentences for treason and affirmed

7519-616: The most important Visigothic law book, the Liber Iudiciorum ( Spanish : Fuero Juzgo , English : Book of Judgements), also called Lex Visigothorum or the Visigothic Code promulgated by king Chindaswinth (642–653 AD) and completed in 654 by his son, king Recceswinth (649–672), abolished the old tradition of having different laws for Hispano-Romans and Visigoths. The new laws applied to both Gothic and Hispano-Roman populations who had been under different laws in

7622-528: The old kingdom. If Ardo is to be identified with Ardobastus, then he survived the invasion and negotiated a treaty, wherein he represented Christians as the Count of the Christians of al-Andalus. This title would pass to a number of individuals until the tenth century at least. Other counts included: Rabî’ ibn Theodulph, Abû Sa’îd al-Qûmis, (a descendant of Ardabastus) and Mu’âwiya ibn Lubb. King of

7725-487: The original Gothic script and a "normalized" one that adds diacritics ( macrons and acute accents ) to certain vowels to clarify the pronunciation or, in certain cases, to indicate the Proto-Germanic origin of the vowel in question. The latter system is usually used in the academic literature. The following table shows the correspondence between spelling and sound for vowels: Notes: The following table shows

7828-435: The past, and it replaced all older codes of law. The code included old laws by past kings, such as Alaric II in his Breviarium Alarici , and Leovigild, but many were also new laws. The code was based almost wholly on Roman law, with some influence of Germanic law in rare cases. Among the eliminated old laws were the harsh laws against Jews. The Liber showed the old system of military and civil divisions in administration

7931-439: The power of the councils to elect kings. Following Recceswinth, King Wamba (672–680) was elected king. He had to deal with Flavius Paulus ' revolts in Tarraconensis and Hilderic of Nimes , and because of this, he felt a need to reform the army. He passed a law declaring all dukes, counts and other military leaders, as well as bishops, had to come to the aid of the kingdom once danger became known or risk harsh punishment. Wamba

8034-557: The previous three years . Ardo is only recorded in one Visigothic regnal list as reigning for seven years. As of 716 the Arabs crossed over the Pyrenees and invaded Narbonensis , the last province under Gothic control. Over the next three years Ardo probably defended what remained of the Visigothic kingdom and he "may have gone down fighting like his predecessor" after the Arabs took Narbonne and before they conquered all that remained of

8137-404: The question word: Gothic has two clitic particles placed in the second position in a sentence, in accordance with Wackernagel's Law . One such clitic particle is - u , indicating a yes–no question or an indirect question, like Latin - ne : The prepositional phrase without the clitic - u appears as af þus silbin : the clitic causes the reversion of originally voiced fricatives, unvoiced at

8240-667: The regions around the Pyrenees with the establishment of the Marca Hispanica from 760 to 785 by the Frankish Empire . The Berbers settled in the south and the Meseta Central in Castile . Initially, the Muslims generally left the Christians alone to practise their religion, although non-Muslims were subject to Islamic law and treated as second-class citizens. Visigothic settlements were concentrated along

8343-458: The rest of the Visigothic Kingdom's existence. These Kings also worked on religious legislature, especially King Sisebut (612–621), who passed several harsh laws against Jews and forced many Jews to convert to Christianity. Sisebut was also successful against the Byzantines, taking several of their cities, including Málaga . The Byzantines were finally defeated by Swinthila (621–631), who had captured all of their Spanish holdings by 625. Suinthila

8446-485: The rise of intellectuals such as, most prominently: Isidore of Seville , one of the most quoted scholars of the Middle Ages, known for the breadth of his literary output, highlighted by his Etymologies , an encyclopedia of the knowledge of the epoch that was known and translated throughout medieval Europe; Eugenius I of Toledo , a theologian and poet expert in mathematics and astronomy ; or Theodulf of Orléans ,

8549-419: The root with the first consonant in the root plus aí ) but without adding a suffix in either case. This parallels the Greek and Sanskrit perfects . The dichotomy is still present in modern Germanic languages: Verbal conjugation in Gothic have two grammatical voices : the active and the medial; three numbers: singular, dual (except in the third person) and plural; two tenses: present and preterite (derived from

8652-522: The same language. A language known as Crimean Gothic survived in the lower Danube area and in isolated mountain regions in Crimea as late as the second half of the 18th century. Lacking certain sound changes characteristic of Gothic, however, Crimean Gothic cannot be a lineal descendant of the language attested in the Codex Argenteus. The existence of such early attested texts makes Gothic

8755-625: The sister of Western Roman emperor Honorius . Athaulf (king of the Visigoths from 410 to 415) spent the next few years operating in the Gallic and Hispanic countrysides, diplomatically playing competing factions of Germanic and Roman commanders against one another to skillful effect, and taking over cities such as Narbonne and Toulouse (in 413). After he married Placidia, the Emperor Honorius enlisted him to provide Visigothic assistance in regaining nominal Roman control of Hispania from

8858-527: The small province of Spania for the Byzantine Empire along the coast of southern Spain. Agila was eventually killed, and his enemy Athanagild (552–568) became the new king. He attacked the Byzantines, but he was unable to dislodge them from southern Spain and was obliged to formally acknowledge the suzerainty of the Empire. The next Visigothic king was Liuvigild (569 – April 21, 586). He

8961-673: The status of foederati when the Western emperor Julius Nepos (474–475) signed in 475 an alliance with Euric, granting him the lands south of the Loire and west of the Rhone in exchange for military service and the lands in Provence (including Arles and Marseilles). The lands in Hispania remained under de facto Visigothic control. After Odoacer deposed the last Roman emperor in the West, Romulus Augustulus , Euric quickly recaptured Provence ,

9064-582: The taxes of the region, with the local Gallic aristocrats now paying their taxes to the Visigoths instead of to the Roman government. The Visigoths with their capital at Toulouse , remained de facto independent, and soon began expanding into Roman territory at the expense of the feeble Western empire. Under Theodoric I (418–451), the Visigoths attacked Arles (in 425 and 430 ) and Narbonne (in 436), but were checked by Litorius using Hunnic mercenaries . This resulted at first in Theodoric's defeat at

9167-573: The two became inextricably intertwined. Despite these civil wars, by 625 AD the Visigoths had succeeded in expelling the Byzantines from Hispania and had established a foothold at the port of Ceuta in Africa. Most of the Visigothic Kingdom was conquered by Umayyad troops from North Africa in 711 to 719, with only the northern reaches of Hispania remaining in Christian hands. The medieval Kingdom of Asturias in northern Spain reputedly began when

9270-458: The type of Indo-European conjugation called ' thematic ' because they insert a vowel derived from the reconstructed proto-Indo-European phonemes *e or *o between roots and inflexional suffixes. The pattern is also present in Greek and Latin: The other conjugation, called ' athematic ', in which suffixes are added directly to roots, exists only in unproductive vestigial forms in Gothic, just like in Greek and Latin. The most important such instance

9373-520: The voicing of diz- ), ga-u-ƕa-sēƕi "whether he saw anything" from gasēƕi "he saw". For the most part, Gothic is known to be significantly closer to Proto-Germanic than any other Germanic language except for that of the (scantily attested) Ancient Nordic runic inscriptions, which has made it invaluable in the reconstruction of Proto-Germanic . In fact, Gothic tends to serve as the primary foundation for reconstructing Proto-Germanic . The reconstructed Proto-Germanic conflicts with Gothic only when there

9476-539: The woods never strayed too far from there," as Thomas F. Glick puts it. However, in fact, the Visigoths were preservers of the classical culture. The bathing culture of Andalusia, for example, often said to be a Muslim invention, is a direct continuation of Romano-Visigothic traditions. Visigothic Mérida housed baths supplied with water by aqueducts , and such aqueducts are also attested in Cordoba , Cadiz and Recopolis. Excavations confirm that Recopolis and Toledo,

9579-685: Was an effective military leader and consolidated Visigothic power in Spain. Liuvigild campaigned against the Eastern Romans in the south in the 570s and he took back Cordova after another revolt. He also fought in the north against the Galician Kingdom of the Suebi and various small independent states, including the Basques and the Cantabrians. He pacified northern Spain but was unable to completely conquer these peoples. When Liuvigild established his son Hermenegild as joint ruler,

9682-690: Was changing, and dukes ( duces provinciae ) and counts ( comites civitatis ) had begun taking more responsibilities outside their original military and civil duties. The servants or slaves of the king became very prominent in the bureaucracy and exercised wide administrative powers. With the Visigoth law codes, women could inherit land and title and manage it independently from their husbands or male relations, dispose of their property in legal wills if they had no heirs, and could represent themselves and bear witness in court by age 14 and arrange for their own marriages by age 20. Chindaswinth (642–653) strengthened

9785-467: Was defeated by the Frankish king Childebert I and then murdered at Barcelona. Afterwards, Theudis (531–548) became king. He expanded Visigothic control over the southern regions, but he was also murdered after a failed invasion of Africa. Visigothic Spain suffered a civil war under King Agila I (549–554), which prompted the Roman/Byzantine emperor Justinian I to send an army and carve out

9888-406: Was deposed by the Franks and replaced by Sisinand . The instability of this period can be attributed to the power struggle between the kings and the nobility. Religious unification strengthened the political power of the church, which it exercised through church councils at Toledo along with the nobles. The fourth council, held during the brief reign of Sisinand in 633, excommunicated and exiled

9991-402: Was eventually deposed in a bloodless coup. King Ervig (680–687) held further church councils and repealed the previous harsh laws of Wamba, though he still made provisions for the army. Ervig had his son-in-law Egica made king. Despite a rebellion by the bishop of Toledo, the 16th council, held in 693, denounced the bishop's revolt. The 17th council in 694 passed harsh laws against the Jews, citing

10094-580: Was in Asturias, where a Visigothic nobleman named Pelagius revolted in 718, and defeated the Muslims at the battle of Covadonga ; this was the beginning of the Reconquista . According to Joseph F. O'Callaghan, the remnants of the Hispano-Gothic aristocracy still played an important role in the society of Hispania. At the end of Visigothic rule, the assimilation of Hispano-Romans and Visigoths

10197-597: Was in the north fighting the Basques . The tale that Julian, Count of Ceuta , facilitated the invasion because one of his daughters had been dishonored by Roderic is possibly mythical. By late July, a battle took place at the Guadalete River in the province of Cádiz . Roderic was betrayed by his troops, who sided with his enemies, and the king was killed in battle. The Muslims then took much of southern Spain with little resistance and went on to capture Toledo, where they executed several Visigothic nobles. In 712, Musa,

10300-587: Was occurring at a fast pace. Their nobility had begun to think of themselves as constituting one people, the gens Gothorum or the Hispani . An unknown number of them fled and took refuge in Asturias or Septimania. In Asturias, they supported Pelagius's uprising, and joining with the indigenous leaders, formed a new aristocracy. The population of the mountain region consisted of native Astures , Galicians , Cantabri , Basques and other groups unassimilated into Hispano-Gothic society. Resistance also continued in

10403-662: Was put down; he also beat back another Frankish offensive in the north. Reccared then oversaw the Third Council of Toledo in 589, where he announced his faith in the Nicene creed and denounced Arianism. He adopted the name Flavius, the family name of the Constantinian dynasty, and styled himself as the successor to the Roman emperors. Reccared also fought the Byzantines in Hispania Baetica after they had begun

10506-526: Was reinterpreted as present tense. The Gothic word wáit , from the proto-Indo-European *woid-h 2 e ("to see" in the perfect), corresponds exactly to its Sanskrit cognate véda and in Greek to ϝοἶδα. Both etymologically should mean "I have seen" (in the perfect sense) but mean "I know" (in the preterite-present meaning). Latin follows the same rule with nōuī ("I have learned" and "I know"). The preterite-present verbs include áigan ("to possess") and kunnan ("to know") among others. The word order of Gothic

10609-538: Was sometimes identical to the nominative and sometimes to the accusative. The three genders of Indo-European were all present. Nouns and adjectives were inflected according to one of two grammatical numbers : the singular and the plural. Nouns can be divided into numerous declensions according to the form of the stem: a , ō , i , u , an , ōn , ein , r , etc. Adjectives have two variants, indefinite and definite (sometimes indeterminate and determinate ), with definite adjectives normally used in combination with

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