From the federate settlement of the Goths in Aquitaine and the long migration into Iberia after Vouillé through Leovigild's consolidation, Reccared's conversion to Catholicism, the Byzantine province of Spania, the encyclopaedic learning of Isidore of Seville and the great Councils of Toledo, the common law of the Liber Iudiciorum and the anointing of Wamba, to the civil war of Roderic and Tariq ibn Ziyad's crossing at Gibraltar. Slide across three centuries to read the major events that turned the Visigothic kingdom into Spain and ended it at Guadalete.
By treaty with the patrician Constantius, the Visigoths under Wallia abandon their Iberian campaign against the Vandals and Alans and are settled as federates of the empire across Aquitania Secunda, with their seat at Tolosa.
From the federate settlement of the Goths in Aquitaine and the long migration into Iberia after Vouillé through Leovigild's consolidation, Reccared's conversion to Catholicism, the Byzantine province of Spania, the encyclopaedic learning of Isidore of Seville and the great Councils of Toledo, the common law of the Liber Iudiciorum and the anointing of Wamba, to the civil war of Roderic and Tariq ibn Ziyad's crossing at Gibraltar. Slide across three centuries to read the major events that turned the Visigothic kingdom into Spain and ended it at Guadalete.
By treaty with the patrician Constantius, the Visigoths under Wallia abandon their Iberian campaign against the Vandals and Alans and are settled as federates of the empire across Aquitania Secunda, with their seat at Tolosa.
Euric repudiates the last formal ties to the empire, occupies the imperial city of Arles, and by treaty wrings recognition of a sovereign Visigothic kingdom from Provence to the Atlantic — including most of Hispania.
On a plain near Poitiers the Frankish king Clovis defeats and personally kills Alaric II. The Visigothic kingdom loses its Aquitanian heart and is driven over the Pyrenees into Hispania, where it will remake itself in the next two generations.
Invited as an ally by the pretender Athanagild, an army of Justinian under the patrician Liberius lands in south-eastern Hispania and carves out the imperial province of Spania, with capitals at Carthago Spartaria and Malaca.
The veteran general Leovigild becomes co-king with his brother Liuva and within five years sole ruler. In an eighteen-year reign of campaigns and reform he will weld the disparate Visigothic state into something like a kingdom.
After his rebellious son Hermenegild dies in prison and the Suevic king Audeca takes monastic vows under duress, the kingdom of Gallaecia is annexed to the Visigothic crown. For the first time in two centuries one ruler holds all Iberia.
King Reccared, son of Leovigild, publicly abjures Arianism with his nobles and Arian bishops, and the Third Council of Toledo proclaims the Visigothic kingdom Catholic. The rupture of two centuries between Goth and Roman is healed in confession of one creed.
King Suinthila reduces the last imperial garrisons in southern Hispania and ends the Byzantine province of Spania. For the first time the Visigothic monarchy rules the whole peninsula, from the Pyrenees to the Strait.
On 4 April, the archbishop of Seville dies after almost forty years on his throne, leaving the encyclopaedic Etymologiae and a Hispano-Gothic Church organised, learned, and the intellectual heart of the Latin West.
King Recceswinth promulgates the Liber Iudiciorum, abolishing the legal distinction between Goth and Roman and binding all subjects of the kingdom under one written code.
On the death of Recceswinth in his villa at Gérticos, the magnates elect the elderly aristocrat Wamba, who is solemnly anointed with holy chrism in the church of Saint Mary at Toledo — the first attested royal anointing in Latin Europe.
At the Seventeenth Council of Toledo, King Egica accuses the Jewish community of conspiracy with Muslim raiders from across the Strait and orders their property confiscated and their children removed to Christian households.
On the death of King Wittiza, the dux of Baetica Roderic is raised on the shields of his faction at Córdoba. The sons of Wittiza retreat north and the kingdom slides into open civil war on the eve of the Berber crossing.
In April the Berber commander Tariq ibn Ziyad crosses the Strait at the rock that would bear his name — Jabal Tariq, Gibraltar — with some seven thousand men. In July his army crushes Roderic at the river Guadalete in Cádiz, and the Visigothic kingdom dissolves in a single summer.