King of the Visigoths
Amalaric
(
Gothic
:
????????????????????, Amalareiks
;
[1]
Spanish
and
Portuguese
:
Amalarico
; 502?531) was king of the
Visigoths
from 522 until his assassination. He was a son of king
Alaric II
and his first wife
Theodegotha
, daughter of
Theodoric the Great
.
Biography
[
edit
]
When
Alaric II
was killed while fighting
Clovis I
, king of the
Franks
, in the
Battle of Vouille
(507), his kingdom fell into disarray. "More serious than the destruction of the Gothic army," writes
Herwig Wolfram
, "than the loss of both Aquitanian provinces and the capital of
Toulose
, was the death of the king."
[2]
Alaric had made no provision for a successor, and although he had two sons, one was of age but
illegitimate
and the other, Amalaric, the offspring of a legal marriage but still a child. Amalaric was carried for safety into
Spain
, which country and
Provence
were thenceforth ruled by his maternal grandfather,
Theodoric the Great
, acting through his vice-regent, an
Ostrogothic
nobleman named
Theudis
.
[3]
The older son,
Gesalec
, was chosen as king but his reign was disastrous. King Theodoric of the Ostrogoths sent an army, led by his sword-bearer
Theudis
, against Gesalec, ostensibly on behalf of Amalaric; Gesalec fled to Africa. The Ostrogoths then drove back the Franks and their
Burgundian
allies, regaining possession of "the south of
Novempopulana
,
Rodez
, probably even
Albi
, and even Toulose". Following the 511 death of Clovis, Theodoric negotiated a peace with Clovis' successors, securing Visigothic control of the southernmost portion of
Gaul
for the rest of the existence of their kingdom.
[4]
In 522, the young Amalaric was proclaimed king, and four years later, on Theodoric's death, he assumed full royal power, although relinquishing Provence to his cousin
Athalaric
.
[3]
His kingdom was faced with a Frankish threat from the north; according to Peter Heather, this was his motivation for marrying
Chrotilda
, the daughter of Clovis.
[5]
However, this was not successful, for according to
Gregory of Tours
, Amalaric pressured her to forsake
Orthodoxy
and convert to
Arian Christianity
, at one point beating her until she bled; she sent to her brother
Childebert I
, king of
Paris
, a towel stained with her own blood.
[6]
It is worth noting Ian Wood's advice that although Gregory provides the fullest information for this period, where it touches
Merovingian
affairs, he often "allowed his religious bias to determine his interpretation of the events."
[7]
Peter Heather agrees with Wood's implication in this instance: "I doubt that this is the full story, but the effects of Frankish intervention are clear enough."
[5]
Childebert
defeated the Visigothic army and took
Narbonne
. Amalaric fled south to
Barcelona
, where according to
Isidore of Seville
, he was assassinated by his own men.
[8]
According to Peter Heather, Theodoric's former governor Theudis was implicated in Amalaric's murder, "and was certainly its prime beneficiary."
[9]
As for Chrotilda, in Gregory's words, she died on the journey home "by some ill chance". Childebert had her body brought to Paris where she was buried alongside her father Clovis.
[6]
Notes
[
edit
]
- ^
Kelsie B. Harder,
Names and their varieties: a collection of essays in onomastics
, American Name Society, University Press of America, 1984, pp. 10-11
- ^
Herwig Wolfram,
History of the Goths
, translated by Thomas J. Dunlap (Berkeley: University of California, 1988), p. 244
- ^
a
b
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the
public domain
:
Chisholm, Hugh
, ed. (1911). "
Amalaric
".
Encyclopædia Britannica
. Vol. 1 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 777.
- ^
Wolfram,
History of the Goths
, p. 245
- ^
a
b
Peter Heather,
The Goths
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), p. 277
- ^
a
b
Gregory of Tours,
Decem Libri Historiarum
, III.10; translated by Lewis Thorpe,
History of the Franks
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974), pp. 170f.
- ^
Wood,
The Merovingian Kingdoms: 450-751
(London: Longman, 1994), p. 171
- ^
Isidore of Seville,
History of the Goths
, chapter 40. Translation by Guido Donini and Gordon B. Ford,
Isidore of Seville's History of the Goths, Vandals, and Suevi
, second revised edition (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1970), p. 19
- ^
Heather,
The Goths
, p. 278
External links
[
edit
]
Media related to
Amalarico
at Wikimedia Commons
Further reading
[
edit
]
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