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This chapter presents an overview of the liturgical reform by Alfonso VI that replaced the Old Hispanic rite with the Roman Rite in Toledo after Alfonso’s conquest of the city in 1085. One consequence of the reform was that the Old Hispanic chant melodies were never notated in diastematic notation, so the Visigothic neumes in which the melodies are preserved cannot be deciphered today. The chapter describes the medieval and early modern history of the Mozarabs of Toledo (who continued to observe their own rite) and the establishment of a new Mozarabic rite by Archbishop Cisneros. Burriel realized the differences between the editions of this rite published by Ortiz, and medieval codices of the Old Hispanic rite, whereas most historians thought that the editions transmitted the liturgy of the Visigoths. The modern Mozarabic rite was a potent cultural symbol of national identity in Bourbon Spain.

This chapter situates Burriel in the context of Spanish Enlightenment historiography. Specifically, it focuses on the state-supported practice of church history, which took on an increasingly political and nationalist tone in the wake of debates about the falsos cronicones and the tradiciones jacobeas. Although many in Spain aspired to a modern method of history writing, this remained an ideal because of the political dangers of debunking prized national myths. Mayans, who practiced modern historical criticism, failed to obtain government support, while Feijoo and Flórez, who were more conservative, flourished under royal patronage. Sarmiento, typically for the time, aligned the Visigoths with the Spanish Bourbons in his program of decoration for the Royal Palace in Madrid. The chapter concludes with a presentation of Burriel’s vision for the cultural renewal of Spain (the “Apuntamientos”), and of his treatise on Spanish paleography, which dwells upon the history of Toledo and its liturgy.

This chapter interprets the cultural significance of the full-color, full-size parchment facsimile of a Toledan Mozarabic liturgical book that Palomares created for presentation to Ferdinand VI, accompanied by a preface in which Burriel cast the Toledan manuscript as a link to the Bourbon monarch’s royal predecessors, the Visigoths. Burriel’s liturgical scholarship had a nationalist flavor, like that of his contemporaries; he considered the medieval liturgical manuscripts in Toledo Cathedral a national treasure that was not well enough known in Spain while most work on the Old Hispanic rite was published abroad. The differences that Burriel noticed between the Cisneros editions and the medieval manuscripts were problematic, considering the status of the Mozarabic liturgy as a cultural icon. The chapter relates Burriel’s interest in the Mozarabic rite to the contemporary debate concerning the status of the Mozarabs and their tax exemptions in eighteenth-century Toledo.

This chapter focuses on attacks on Byzantium's territories. The first crack appeared in the empire's expanded borders three years after the death of Justinian in 565. As pressure from the Avars increased on the Germanic tribes in the lands north of the Danube, the Lombard tribe followed the usual route to safety and crossed the border into Byzantine Italy. The Byzantine governor in Ravenna struggled to deal with the newcomers, allowing them to take over town after town in northern Italy, first Milan in 569 and then Pavia in 571. Lacking the military force to drive the Lombards out, the Byzantines tried all the other methods, including the bribing the neighboring Franks to induce them to attack the Lombards. In the small enclave in southern Spain that had been recovered in the 550s, pressure from the Visigoths was building and they took the city of Cordoba in 572. On the eastern frontier, Chosroes I ignored existing treaties and captured the fortified city of Daras in 573.

In this period, the Empire weakened and Germani—strange (Visigoths) and familiar (Burgundians and Franks)—increasingly exploited the opportunity to partition Gaul, but not the Alamanni. These, in line with cultural developments elsewhere in the western Germanic world, grew socially and politically more sophisticated, and their numbers were swelled by further waves of Elbe-Germanic migration. However, apart from their usual opportunistic raiding and a short spell in the 450s when they were under Hunnic domination, they remained loyal to the Empire. Their expansion, when it came, was marginal; and from around 496 they were absorbed by the Franks. This was principally because of their continuing symbiosis with Rome, which inhibited independent development and tied their fortunes to those of the declining Empire.

This chapter examines the East Roman position in the Balkans in the sixth century and the imperial response to mounting pressure caused by Slavonic raiders and settlers. The migration to the north of the Balkans of the Avars in the late sixth century is identified as a major destabilising factor, which also played a role in propelling Langobard settlers into northern Italy where recently restored Roman rule was undermined. The emergence of new political and social structures further West in Visigothic Hispania, Merovingian Gaul, and Lowland Britain are then examined. In Gaul (or ‘Francia”) in particular, there are signs of growing ambition and sophistication on the part of royal government. In Spain likewise, the conversion of the Visigoths to Catholic Christianity allowed for the emergence of a closer relationship between ruler and ruled, and in Britain new political and social hierarchies began to emerge.

With the currents that fed into post‐Roman political thought mapped, this chapter looks at the relationship of peace and power in several post‐Roman (or sub‐Roman) kingdoms: Vandal Africa, Visigothic Spain, Gibiching Burgundy, Ostrogothic Italy, and Merovingian Francia. Gregory the Great's highly influential attitudes to peace are also explored. The chapter ends by addressing late Merovingian political ideas that prefigure later Carolingian developments. The core argument of this chapter is that post‐Roman rulers invested considerable energy and expense in presenting themselves as Rome's heirs, a posture that demanded that they took up the language of civil order and Roman peace. This is most evident in the imitatio imperii of figures such as Theudebert of Francia. The chapter also argues that there was some substance to the claims. The writings of Dracontius, Cassiodorus, Isidore of Seville, Eugenius II of Toledo, Avitus of Vienne, and Gregory of Tours — amongst others — are analysed.

In this chapter the events following the execution of Stilicho are explored, particularly the rapid rise and fall of successive chief ministers, and the striking inactivity of the now adult emperor Honorius. The serious military troubles represented by Visigothic invasions of Italy and powerful usurpers based in Gaul are examined, as is the breakdown in relations between the central government and the senatorial elite represented by negotiations prior to the sack of Rome and provincial elite support for the usurper Constantine III in Gaul. The eventual rise of the general Flavius Constantius, his successful establishment of a new regime, and marriage to the emperor’s sister Galla Placidia and acclamation as co-Augustus are traced. Finally, the repercussions of the deaths of first Constantius and then Honorius are foreshadowed, while the question of Honorius’ fulfilment of his religious and ceremonial role in particular is given extensive attention.

This chapter explores the background of why royal women in León-Castilla had access to their particular clusters of resources and norms. Visigothic inheritance patterns help explain their command of economic resources. But Visigothic notions of monarchy, which exclude the king’s nuclear family from power, do not provide a model for the post-Conquest Christian kingdoms. Who the ruler was depended first of all on lineage, and it was a lineage system in which patrilineal descent struggled with and eventually defeated an older system of descent through the king’s daughter. The king’s daughter was taken out of the line of succession and directed instead towards religious life, where she gained different kinds of powers. From the ninth century to the eleventh, the daughters of this line of kings were “kept” within the lineage, becoming consecrated virgins rather than marriage partners.

The letters of Ruricius survive only in the Codex Sangallensis 190, written in the late eighth or early ninth century. They cover the period from ca.470 until ca. 507, the crucial transitional phase between imperial and barbarian Gaul, and are divided into two books, the first with eighteen letters and the second with sixty-five. The collection also contains 13 letters written to Ruricius. The collection therefore provides a rare opportunity to see sequences of letters in an exchange. These letters present a picture of life in late Roman Gaul that significantly complements that provided by Ruricius’ better-known confrères, such as Sidonius, Avitus, and Ennodius. The Ruricius collection has a very local flavor and, in an intimate and domestic way, describes everyday life in Visigothic Aquitania. The first book of letters was carefully organized as a unit in its own right. The second book is more difficult to assess.  Even though there are no indications of divisions in the manuscript, there are suggestions of attempts to organize some of the letters into internally consistent "dossiers." The second book also seems rather to preserve, at the beginning, traces of plans to create two additional books, and, toward the end, elements of a rudimentary filing system.

Chapter 12 begins with an introduction to St. Augustine in the context of his historical times. The City of God was written immediately after the sack of Rome in 410 by the Visigoths and in response to those who held Christianity responsible for it. Augustine rigorously defends Christianity against its critics. By means of an analysis of the City of God, this chapter explores Augustine’s vision of pagan Rome as sinful and decadent in contrast to the glorious image presented by Virgil in the Aeneid. Augustine develops Christ’s statements about the inward nature of sin and expands its scope considerably. Building on Jesus’ claims about the Kingdom of God, Augustine develops the idea of the City of God in contrast to the City of Man. Augustine’s account of the origin of evil and his prohibition of suicide are also discussed. Augustine develops a sphere of inwardness that is invulnerable to the changes in the external world.

Chapter 5 analyses how Arabic-Islamic scholars approached the history of the Visigoths. Before the Muslim invasion, the Arabic-Islamic world had little knowledge of the Iberian Peninsula and its Visigothic ruling elite. Consequently, the earliest depictions of the Visigoths were written from the conquerors’ perspective. Because early Andalusian scholars mainly looked to the Middle East for orientation, Visigothic history only began to arouse their curiosity after a regional identity had emerged in Muslim al-Andalus. Thanks to the disclosure of important Latin sources, Andalusian scholarship of the ninth and tenth centuries acquired a thorough overview of Visigothic history that was assimilated by Middle Eastern scholars in the following centuries. In the Muslim West, however, Visigothic history lost appeal in the face of the expanding Iberian Christians’ claim to the Visigothic heritage. Thus, a heritage gained was largely lost as a consequence of geopolitical changes in the Western Mediterranean.