Spania

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Province of Spania
PROVINCIA SPANI

Province of the Byzantine (Roman)

Empire

552624

Spania at its greatest extent, around the time

of its foundation

Capital

Malaca (Mlaga)
or Carthago
Spartaria (Cartagena)

Historical

Early Middle Ages

era
Established
-

552

Disestablis

624

- hed

Today part

Gibraltar

of

Portugal
Spain
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Spania (Latin: Provincia Spaniae) was a province of the Byzantine Empire from 552 until 624[1] in the
south of the Iberian Peninsula and theBalearic Islands. It was a part of the conquests
of Emperor Justinian I in an effort to restore the western provinces of the Empire.
Contents
[hide]

1 Background

2 Conquest and foundation

3 Extent and geography

4 Administration
o

4.1 Secular government

4.2 Ecclesiastical government

5 Culture

6 Decline and Visigothic conquest

7 Sources

8 Notes

Background[edit]
In 409 the Vandals, Suebi and Alans, who had broken through the Roman border defences on
the Rhine two years before, crossed the Pyrenees into the Iberian peninsula. Nevertheless, effective
Roman rule was maintained over most areas through the death of EmperorMajorian in 461.
[2]
The Visigoths, vassals of the Roman Empire who had settled in Aquitaine by imperial invitation
(420), increasingly filled the vacuum left as the Vandals moved into Africa. A large scale migration of
the Visigoths into Iberia began in 494 under Alaric II, and their overlordship of most of the eastern
and central peninsula was established by 476.

Conquest and foundation[edit]

In 534, Roman general Belisarius re-established the Byzantine province of Mauretania with the
conquest of the Vandal kingdom in northern Africa. Despite his efforts, the Vandal king Gelimer had
been unable to effect an alliance with the Gothic king Theudis, who probably took the opportunity of
the collapse of Vandal authority to conquer Ceuta (Septem) across the Straits of Gibraltar in 533,
possibly to keep it out of Byzantine hands. This citadel was nevertheless seized the following year
by an expedition dispatched by Belisarius. Ceuta (which was briefly recaptured by the Visigoths in
540[3]) became a part of Mauretania. It was an important base for reconnaissance of Spain in the
years leading up to the peninsula's invasion by Justinian's forces in 552.

In 550, in the reign of Agila I, Spain was troubled by a series of revolts, two of which were serious.
The citizens of Crdoba rebelled against Gothic or Arian rule and Agila was roundly defeated, his
son killed, and the royal treasure lost. He himself retreated to Mrida.[4] The date of the other major
revolt cannot be arrived at precisely. Either at the commencement of his reign (549) or as late as
551, a nobleman namedAthanagild took Seville, capital of Baetica, and presumed to rule as king in
opposition to Agila. Exactly who approached the Byzantines for assistance and when is also
disputed; the primary sources are divided.[5] Even the name of the general of the Byzantine army is
disputed. Although Jordanes wrote that the Patrician Liberius was its commander:
He [Theudis] was succeeded by Agila, who holds the kingdom to the present day. Athanagild has
rebelled against him and is even now provoking the might of the Roman Empire. So Liberius the
Patrician is on the way with an army to oppose him. [6]
James J. O'Donnell, in his biography of Liberius, casts doubt on this statement, since the patrician
was an octogenarian at the time, andProcopius reports he had returned to Constantinople when the
Byzantines invaded Hispania and could not have led the invasion. O'Donnell states that "Jordanes
may have heard that Liberius' name was being mentioned for commander of the Spanish expedition,
but, in the end, the fact of his relief from command of the forces in Sicily makes the story of his
voyage to Spain incredible."[7]
However, according to Isidore of Seville in his History of the Goths, it was Athanagild, in autumn of
551 or winter of 552, who begged Justinian for help. The army was probably sent in 552 and made
landfall in June or July. Roman forces landed probably at the mouth of the Guadalete or
perhaps Mlaga and joined with Athanagild to defeat Agila as he marched south from Mrida
towards Seville in August or September 552.[8] The war dragged on for two more years. Liberius
returned to Constantinople by May 553 and it is likely that a Byzantine force from Italy, which had
only recently been pacified after the Gothic War, landed at Cartagena in early March 555 and
marched inland to Baza (Basti) in order to join up with their compatriots near Seville. Their landing at
Cartagena was violent. The native population, which included the family of Leander of Seville, was
well disposed to the Visigoths and the Byzantine government of the city was forced to suppress their
freedoms, an oppression which lasted decades into their occupation. Leander and most of his family
fled and his writings preserve the strong anti-Byzantine sentiment.
In late March 555, the supporters of Agila, in fear of the recent Byzantine successes, turned and
assassinated him, making Athanagild the king of the Goths. Quickly the new king tried to rid Spain of
the Byzantines, but failed. The Byzantines occupied many coastal cities in Baetica and this region
was to remain a Byzantine province until its reconquest by the Visigoths barely seventy years later.

The Byzantine Empire at its greatest extent under Justinian I. Justinian's inherited empire in pink with his conquests, including
Spania, in orange. It is the westernmost province.

Extent and geography[edit]

The Byzantine province of Spania never extended very far inland and received relatively little
attention from East Roman authorities, probably because it was designed as a defensive bulwark
against a Gothic invasion of Africa, which would have been an unnecessary distraction at a time
when the Persian Empire was a larger threat in the East.[9] The most important cities of Byzantine
Spania were Mlaga and Cartagena, the probable landing sites of the Byzantine army, which was
renamed from Carthago Nova to Carthago Spartaria. It is unknown which of those two cities was the
provincial capital, but it was almost certainly one of them. The cities were the centres of Byzantine
power and while a few were retaken by Agila, the ones which were retained were a bulwark against
Visigothic attempts at reconquest. The Goths easily ravaged the countryside of Spania but were
inept at sieges and the fortified towns were safe centres of Roman administration.

Spania at its greatest extent, with cities indicated and lost territory.

There are few cities which can be confidently considered to have been under Byzantine government
in the period. The city of Medina Sidonia (Asidona) was held until 572, when it was reconquered
by Leovigild. Gisgonza (also Gigonza, ancient Sagontia)[10]was also held until the reign
of Witteric (603610) and it indicates that the south of the province of Baetica was completely
Byzantine from Mlaga to the mouth of the Guadalete. In the province of Carthaginiensis, wherein
lay Cartagena and of which it was capital, the city of Baza was also Byzantine and it probably
resisted the inroads of Leovigild into that territory in 570, though it was Visigothic by 589.
Among the cities which have been disputed as being Byzantine, Crdoba is the greatest. Some
historians have suspected it of being the first capital of the province of Spania and ascribed the cities
of Ecija (Astigi), Cabra (Egabra), Guadix (Acci), and Granada (Illiberris) to the Byzantines on this
basis, but there is no positive evidence in the sources of Roman rule in any of these cities. Crdoba
was in a state of rebellion, briefly joined by Seville from 566567, until Leovigild put it down in 572. It
may have had a local government during this period, or may have recognised Byzantine suzerainty.
[11]

Aside from the southern parts of the provinces of Baetica and Carthaginiensis (the
southern Levante), the Byzantines also held Ceuta across from the Gibraltar and the Balearic
Islands, which had fallen to them along with the rest of the Vandal kingdom. Ceuta, though it had
been Visigothic and was destined to be associated with the Iberian peninsula for its subsequent

history, was attached to the province of Mauretania Secunda. The Balearics with Baetica and
Carthaginiensis formed the new province of Spania. By the year 600 Spania had dwindled to little
more than Mlaga and Cartagena and the Balearics; it extended no further north than the Sierra
Nevada. George of Cyprus recorded only one civitas (city, people) in the province: the
"Mesopotamians", though the meaning of this is uncertain.

Administration[edit]

The Lpida de Comenciolo, an inscription from Cartagena recording the patriciate of Comenciolus

Secular government[edit]
The chief administrative official in Spania was the magister militum Spaniae, meaning "master of the
military of Spain." The magister militum governed civil and military affairs in the province and was
subordinate only to the Emperor. Typically the magister was a member of the highest aristocratic
class and bore the rank of patrician. The office, though it only appears in records for the first time in
589, was probably a creation of Justinian, as was the mint, which issued provincial currency until the
end of the province (c. 625).
There were five known magistri in the history of the province, though this certainly does not
represent the whole. Two are passingly mentioned by Isidore as successive governors in the time
of Suinthila, but he omits their names. The first known governor, Comenciolus
(possibly Comentiolus), repaired the gates of Cartagena in lieu of the "barbarians" (i.e. the Visigoths)
and left an inscription (dated 1 September 589) in the city which survives to this day.[12] It is
in Latin and may reflect the continued use of Latin as the administrative language of the province. (It
does not, however, imply that Cartagena was the capital of Spania.) Around 600 there was a
governor named Comitiolus who bore the rank of gloriosus, the highest rank after that of emperor.
The patrician and magister Caesarius made a peace treaty with Sisebut in 614 and conferred with
the emperor Heraclius, who was more concerned with matters in Mesopotamia.
The border between Spania and Visigothic kingdom was not closed. Travel between the border for
personal and mercantile reasons was allowed and the two regions experienced prolonged periods of
peace. The ease of traversing the frontier was noted by the exiled Leander, whose brother more
than once crossed it without hindrance. The border had been determined by a treaty (pacta)
between Athanagild and Justinian I, but the date of the treaty is still debated. It may have been part
of the initial conditions of Byzantine assistance in 551 or 552 or it may have been a product of the
war between Goth and Roman in 555 or later. It was certainly signed before Justinian's death in 565.
The legitimacy of the pacta was recognised as late as the 7th century, which accounts for the ease
of travel and trade.

Ecclesiastical government[edit]
The province of Spania was predominantly Latin Christian, while the Byzantine governors were the
same, though many were Eastern Christians. Despite this, the relationship between subject and ruler
and between church and state seems to have been no better than in Arian Visigothic Spain. The
church of Spania was also less independent of the Papacy than the Gothic church, which was
composed largely of Hispano-Romans. The two churches were separate. No clerics of one ever
attended councils of the other. Indeed, no provincial council ever met in Spania. The theological
controversies of each, however, were shared: the one stirred up by Vincent of Zaragoza's conversion
to Arianism sparked a response from the bishop of Mlaga.

Byzantine oil lamp from Cartagena

Gregory the Great interfered successfully in the various bishoprics of the province more than any
pope ever did in the Visigothic kingdom. He came to the defence of the property of two deposed
bishops and lorded it over the magister militum Comitiolus, whom he accused of interfering in
ecclesiastical affairs. He implicitly accused Licinianus of Cartagena of ordaining ignoramuses to the
priesthood, but Licinianus simply replied that to not do so would leave the diocese of the province
empty: a sad commentary on the state of clerical education in Spania. [13]

Culture[edit]
The architectural and artistic style prevalent in Spania was not that of Byzantium proper but rather
the Byzantinist styles of northern Africa. Two churches, one at Algezares south of Murcia and that
of San Pedro de Alcntara near Mlaga, have been excavated and studied archaeologically. Only in
the Balearic Islands did the style of Greece and Thrace take a foothold. And though Byzantine
stylistic markers are present throughout Spain, in the Gothic regions they do not share connections
with the African styles prevalent in Spania.

In the vicinity of Cartagena, pottery has been discovered bearing distinctively African amphorae that
further testify to the close ties between the provinces of Spania and Mauretania Secunda. Cartagena
has in recent years been excavated quite thoroughly and a housing complex probably created for
Byzantine soldiers occupying the city discovered.[14] Many artefacts of the Byzantine presence can be
seen in the Museo Arqueolgico de Cartagena. Nevertheless, the city, like most in Spain at that time
was much diminished in population and area under the Byzantine government.

Decline and Visigothic conquest[edit]

Spania in 586 after the conquests of Leovigild (with dates of conquest on map).

In the reigns of Athanagild and Leovigild, the Byzantines were unable to push their offensive forward
and the Visigoths made some successful pushes back. Around 570, Leovigild ravaged Bastetania
(Bastitania or Bastania, the region of Baza) and took Medina Sidonia through the treachery of an
insider named Framidaneus (possibly a Goth). He may have taken Baza and he certainly raided into
the environs of Mlaga, defeating a relief army sent from there. He took many cities and fortresses in
the Guadalquivir valley and defeated a large army of rustici (rustics), according to John of Biclarum,
who may have been referring to an army of bandits called Bagaudae who had established
themselves in the disputed buffer zone between Gothic and Roman control. [15] In 577 in Orospeda, a
region under Byzantine control, Leovigild defeated more rustici rebellantes, probably Bagaudae.
After two seasons of campaigning against the Romans, however, Leovigild concentrated his military
efforts elsewhere.
During the rule of Reccared, the Byzantines again took the offensive and probably even regained or
gained ground. Reccared recognised the legitimacy of the Byzantine frontier and wrote to Pope
Gregory requesting a copy be sent from the Emperor Maurice. Gregory simply replied that the text of
the treaty had been lost in a fire during Justinian's reign and warned Reccared that he would not
want it found because it would have probably granted the Byzantines more territory than they
actually then possessed (August 599). Leovigild's gains against the Roman government were
greater than the Roman reconquests of Reccared's reign; the Byzantine province of Spania was in
decline.

Among later kings, Witteric campaigned frequently against Spania, though his generals were more
successful than he. The latter captured the small town of Gisgonza. Gundemar moved the primatial
see of Carthaginiensis from Byzantine Cartagena to Visigothic Toledo in 610 and campaigned
against Spania in 611, but to no effect. Sisebut more than any king before him became the scourge
of the Byzantines in Spain. In 614 and 615, he carried out two massive expeditions against them and
conquered Mlaga before 619, when its bishop appears at the Second Council of Seville. He
conquered as far as the Mediterranean coast and razed many cities to the ground, enough even to
catch the attention of the Frankish chronicler Fredegar:
. . . et plures civitates ab imperio Romano Sisebodus litore maris abstulit et usque fundamentum
destruxit.
. . . king Sisbodus took many cities from the Roman empire along the coast, destroying them and
reducing them to rubble.[16]
Sisebut probably also razed Cartagena, which was so completely desolated that it never reappeared
in Visigothic Spain. Because the Goths were unable to undertake decent sieges, they were forced to
reduce the defences of all fortified places they took in order to prevent later armies from using them
against them. Because Cartagena was destroyed but Mlaga was spared, it has been inferred that
the former fell first while the Byzantine presence was still large enough to constitute a threat. Mlaga
fell some time after when the Byzantines were so reduced as to no longer form a danger to
Visigothic hegemony over the whole peninsula.
In 621, the Byzantines still held a few towns, but Suinthila recovered them shortly and by 624 the
entire province of Spania was in Visigothic hands save the Balearic Islands, which were an
economic backwater in the 7th century. Like the Sardinian giudicati and Corsica in that period, the
Balearics were only nominally Byzantine. They were finally separated from the Empire by
the Saracen incursions of the 8th through 10th centuries.
Sometime during the joint reign of Egica and Wittiza, a Byzantine fleet raided the coasts of southern
Spain and was driven off by a local count named Theudimer. The dating of this event is disputed: it
may have occurred as part of Leontios' expedition to relieve Carthage, under assault by the Arabs, in
697; perhaps later, around 702; or perhaps late in Wittiza's reign. What is almost universally
accepted is that it was an isolated incident connected with other military activities (probably against
the Arabs or Berbers) and not an attempt to reestablish the lost province of Spania. As Professor
Thompson states, "We know nothing whatever of the context of this strange event." [17]

Sources[edit]
Primary

Fredegar; John Michael Wallace-Hadrill, trans. (1960). The Fourth Book of the Chronicle of
Fredegar with its Continuations. Connecticut: Greenwood Press.

Jordanes; Charles C. Mierow, trans. The Origin and Deeds of the Goths.
Secondary

Bachrach, B. S. (1973). "A Reassessment of Visigothic Jewish Policy, 589711". The

American Historical Review 78 (1): 1134. doi:10.2307/1853939.

Collins, R. (2004). Visigothic Spain, 409711. Oxford: Blackwell.

Helal Ouriachen, El Housin (2009). La ciudad btica durante la Antigedad Tarda:

Persistencias y mutaciones locales en relacin con la realidad urbana del Mediterraneo y del
Atlntico. Granada: Universidad de Granada.

Thompson, E. A. (1969). The Goths in Spain. Oxford: Clarendon. Cf. the appendix "The
Byzantine Province", pp. 32034.

Wallace-Hadrill, J. M. (1967). The Barbarian West, 4001000 (3rd ed.). London: Hutchison.
Wood, Jamie (2010). "Defending Byzantine Spain: Frontiers and Diplomacy". Early Medieval
Europe 18 (3): 292319. doi:10.1111/j.1471-8847.2010.00300.x.

Notes[edit]
1.

Jump up^ Dates vary. Some (Collins) put the date of landing as early as 551, other (Wallace-Hadrill) as late as
554. The conquest of the last vestiges of the province has been dated to 625 (Collins) or 629 (W-H).

2.

Jump up^ Michael Kulikowski, Late Roman Spain and its Cities (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
2004).

3.

Jump up^ Thompson, p. 16. The Byzantines attacked on Sunday, while the Goths had laid down their arms to
honour the Sabbath.

4.

Jump up^ Isidore of Seville, History of the Goths, translation by Guido Donini and Gordon B. Ford, Isidore of
Seville's History of the Goths, Vandals, and Suevi, 2nd revised ed. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1970), chapter 47, pp. 21f.

5.
6.

Jump up^ Collins, pp. 4749.

Jump up^ Jordanes, Getica, translated by Charles Christopher Mierow, The Gothic History of Jordanes, 1915
(Cambridge: Speculum Historiale, 1966), LVIII, 303, p. 138.

7.

Jump up^ O'Donnell, "Liberius the Patrician", Traditio 37 (1981), p. 67.

8.

Jump up^ Thompson, p. 325, based on Isidore.

9.

Jump up^ Collins, p. 49.

10.

Jump up^ Long misidentified as Sigenza.

11.

Jump up^ Collins, p. 49, considers it unlikely that Crdoba could have been in revolt for so long without coming
under Byzantine rule. Thompson, p. 322, sees the lack of primary evidence for Byzantine government in any of the
aforementioned cities as conclusive that the Byzantines never could have held Crdoba directly.

12.

Jump up^ Thompson, p. 331. The gate was augmented with towers, porticoes, and a vaulted chamber.

13.

Jump up^ Thompson, p. 330.

14.

Jump up^ Collins, pp. 21920.

15.

Jump up^ Collins, pp. 5255.

16.

Jump up^ Fredegar, IV, vii.

17.

Jump up^ Thompson, p. 249.