Spania

• 1. Introduction

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  Spania was the westernmost province of the Eastern Roman Empire. It occupied the southern coast of the Iberian Peninsula and the Balearic Islands, and it lasted from 552 to 624. For those seventy-two years it represented Rome in a region the empire had largely abandoned a century before. Its most important cities were Málaga and Cartagena. The Emperor Justinian I established it in an effort to restore the western provinces of the empire. Its origins, however, were rooted in a Visigothic civil war. It survived longer than anyone at the time probably expected. That puzzle begins with the civil war itself, and the invitation that summoned a Byzantine army to the Iberian coast.

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• 2. A Usurper's Invitation

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  The Battle of Vouillé in 507 cost the Visigoths most of their territory in Gaul. Iberia became the sole seat of their power from that point on. By 550, the reigning king Agila controlled most of the peninsula. Then two serious revolts shook his grip. Citizens of Córdoba rebelled against Gothic rule, and Agila suffered a crushing defeat there. His son was killed. The royal treasure was lost. Agila retreated to Mérida. Separately, a nobleman named Athanagild seized Seville, capital of the province of Baetica, and declared himself king in opposition.

  Exactly who appealed to Justinian I for Byzantine assistance is disputed in the sources. The chronicler Jordanes named the Patrician Liberius as the commander of the Byzantine army that came. James J. O'Donnell, in his biography of Liberius, cast serious doubt on this. Liberius was an octogenarian at the time. Procopius records that Liberius had returned to Constantinople before the invasion began, making his command there impossible. Isidore of Seville, in his History of the Goths, took a different view. He wrote that Athanagild himself had begged Justinian for help in the autumn of 551 or the winter of 552.

  Wherever the initiative lay, a Byzantine army landed in June or July of 552. It came ashore probably at the mouth of the Guadalete, or perhaps near Málaga. The combined forces defeated Agila as he marched south from Mérida toward Seville, probably in August or September. The war between the factions dragged on for two more years. By May 553, Liberius had returned to Constantinople, whatever his original role had been. A second Byzantine force, drawn from Italy, then landed at Cartagena in early March 555 and marched inland to Baza.

  Their arrival at Cartagena was violent. The local population, which included the family of Leander of Seville, strongly favoured the Visigoths. Byzantine authorities suppressed local freedoms to maintain control, and that oppression lasted for decades. Leander fled the city, and his writings preserve a sharp anti-Byzantine sentiment. In late March 555, Agila's supporters, alarmed by the Byzantine advances, assassinated him. Athanagild became king of the Goths and moved at once to push the Byzantines from the peninsula. He failed. The province he had inadvertently created would outlast him by decades.

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• 3. The Coastal Strip

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  The Eastern Roman Empire designed Spania not as a base for reconquering Iberia but as a shield for North Africa. A Gothic force that crossed the Strait of Gibraltar would threaten the African provinces, which Constantinople could not afford to lose. With the Persian Empire demanding attention in the East, the emperor had little appetite for ambitious western campaigns.

  The Goths were effective at raiding the countryside but consistently failed at siege warfare, a weakness that kept the coastal cities in Roman hands. Fortified towns along the coast proved stubborn. Those cities remained safe centres of Roman administration for decades.

  Cartagena, known in Roman times as Carthago Nova, was renamed Carthago Spartaria by the Byzantines and was probably the provincial capital. Medina Sidonia, the ancient Asidona, remained in Byzantine hands until 572, when Leovigild retook it. Gisgonza, the ancient Sagontia, held out until the reign of Witteric, who ruled from 603 to 610. These two examples indicate that the southern stretch of the province of Baetica was solidly Byzantine for much of the province's life. That stretch ran from Málaga to the mouth of the Guadalete. Further east, in Carthaginiensis, the city of Baza was also Byzantine and probably resisted Leovigild's incursions around 570. By around 600, the province extended no further north than the Sierra Nevada.

  The province also included Ceuta, across from Gibraltar, though Ceuta was attached administratively to the province of Mauretania Secunda rather than Spania. The Balearic Islands formed the third element of the province. A geographic survey by George of Cyprus noted only one civitas in Spania: the "Mesopotamians," a term whose precise meaning is still debated. José Soto Chica and Ana María Berenjeno propose this refers to modern Algeciras, via a translation of the Greek "Mesopotamenoi" as the Arabic "al-Djazirat."

  The boundary between Spania and the Visigothic kingdom was defined by a treaty, or pacta, agreed between Athanagild and Justinian I. It was signed before Justinian's death in 565. The legitimacy of that agreement was recognised as late as the 7th century. The border was not a wall. The exiled bishop Leander recorded that his brother crossed it more than once without difficulty. Running that open frontier fell to an official whose title does not appear in surviving records until 589.

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• 4. The Governor's Office

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  An inscription carved in Cartagena on the 1st of September 589 records the repair of the city's gates against the "barbarians," meaning the Visigoths. The man who ordered the work was identified as Comentiolus. He was possibly the first person to hold the title magister militum Spaniae, meaning "master of the military of Spain." The inscription survives to this day. Its Latin text may reflect the continued use of that language as the administrative tongue of the province at the close of the 6th century.

  The magister militum was the chief official in Spania, governing both civil and military affairs and reporting only to the Emperor. The holder of the office typically bore the rank of patrician, the highest aristocratic grade. Although the title first appears in records in 589, the office was most likely created by Justinian at the province's founding. The provincial mint, probably also a Justinian creation, issued coins until around 625.

  Only five magistri are known by name or reference, and this list represents only a fraction of the full total. Around 600, a governor named Comitiolus bore the rank of gloriosus, the highest civil title available to anyone below the Emperor. Later, a patrician named Caesarius negotiated a peace treaty with the Visigothic king Sisebut in 614. He also corresponded with the Emperor Heraclius, who was then preoccupied with affairs in Mesopotamia. Isidore of Seville mentions two more governors, unnamed, who administered the province under the Visigothic king Suinthila.

  Heraclius was fighting a war in Mesopotamia when he received Caesarius's communications in 614. The terms of the peace Caesarius negotiated with Sisebut suggest concession rather than confidence. The most persistent voice shaping the province's affairs, however, came not from Constantinople but from Rome.

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• 5. The Long Arm of Rome

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  The bishop of Cartagena, a man named Licinianus, received an unusual accusation from Pope Gregory I: he had been ordaining ignorant men as priests. His reply was disarmingly practical. Not ordaining ignoramuses, he wrote, would leave the entire diocese empty of clergy. That exchange says as much about the state of clerical education in the province as any formal record could. Ecclesiastical education was poor. And Rome was watching closely.

  Spania was predominantly Latin Christian, and its Byzantine governors were largely of the same faith. That shared faith did not improve relations between rulers and governed. The relationship was reportedly no better than it had been under Arian Visigothic administration. The church of Spania was also less independent of the Papacy than the Gothic church, which was composed largely of Hispano-Romans.

  No provincial council ever met in Spania, and no cleric of one church ever attended a council of the other. They were not immune to each other's theological controversies, however. When Bishop Vincent of Zaragoza converted to Arianism, the bishop of Málaga felt compelled to respond.

  Gregory the Great interfered in Spania's ecclesiastical affairs more than any pope ever interfered in the Visigothic kingdom. He defended the property of two deposed bishops. He confronted the magister militum Comitiolus directly, accusing him of interfering in church business. His correspondence with Spania was pointed and persistent. He found in this province a weaker, more isolated church than the well-organised Gothic institutions across the border, and his letters reflected that gap. The buildings the Byzantines left behind in Spania pointed architecturally not toward Constantinople but toward the shores of North Africa.

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• 6. African Echoes

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  At Algezares, south of Murcia, archaeologists have excavated a church from the period of Byzantine occupation. A second church has been studied at San Pedro de Alcántara, near Málaga. Neither building reflects the Byzantine architectural tradition of Constantinople or of Greece and Thrace. Both belong instead to the Byzantinist styles of North Africa, the tradition that had taken hold in the provinces across the Strait of Gibraltar.

  In the vicinity of Cartagena, excavators have found pottery bearing the characteristic forms of African amphorae, pointing to sustained trade and cultural contact with the North African provinces. Recent excavations within Cartagena itself uncovered a housing complex that was probably built for Byzantine soldiers stationed there. The Museo Arqueológico de Cartagena holds many of the artefacts recovered from those digs.

  In Gothic Spain, Byzantine stylistic influences were present, but they had no connection to the North African forms that defined Spania's buildings and objects. Only in the Balearic Islands did the styles of Greece and Thrace gain any presence. The two traditions ran in parallel without touching.

  Cartagena was a diminished city under Byzantine rule. Its population and occupied area had contracted, as they had in most Spanish cities during that period. The walls that had held for decades would face their severest test in the campaigns of the early 7th century.

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• 7. The Last Cities

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  John of Biclarum records that Leovigild's campaigns against Spania included the defeat of a force described as rustici, or rustics. These were probably the Bagaudae, fighters who had established themselves in the buffer zone between Gothic and Byzantine control. In 577, Leovigild defeated further rustici rebellantes in a region called Orospeda, then under Byzantine authority. After two seasons of intensive campaigning, he turned his attention elsewhere.

  In August 599, Pope Gregory wrote to the Visigothic king Reccared with unwelcome news. Reccared had asked Gregory to obtain a copy of the treaty defining the Byzantine frontier, to be sent from the Emperor Maurice. Gregory replied that the treaty text had been destroyed in a fire during Justinian's reign. He warned Reccared that if found, the document would probably grant the Byzantines more territory than they then held. That exchange captures where the war stood around the turn of the 7th century. The Byzantines had suffered losses under Leovigild but had stabilised, and possibly recovered some ground, under Reccared.

  Witteric campaigned against Spania repeatedly in the early 7th century, though his generals proved more effective in the field than he did himself. Gundemar moved the primatial see of the province of Carthaginiensis from Byzantine Cartagena to Visigothic Toledo in 610. He campaigned against Spania in 611 with no effect. His successor Sisebut was different. In 614 and 615, Sisebut mounted two massive expeditions and swept down the coast. He conquered Málaga. He razed cities in numbers large enough to catch the attention of the Frankish chronicler Fredegar. Fredegar captured the scope of the campaigns in a single sentence: "king Sisbodus took many cities from the Roman empire along the coast, destroying them and reducing them to rubble."

  Cartagena suffered the worst destruction of all. The city was so thoroughly razed that it disappeared from the record of Visigothic Spain and never reappeared. Because Cartagena was destroyed but Málaga was spared, historians have inferred that Cartagena fell first. At that point, the Byzantine garrison was still large enough to pose a genuine military threat. Málaga fell afterward, when the Byzantines had dwindled too far to endanger Visigothic control. The thoroughness of the destruction was not gratuitous. A fortified city left intact could become an enemy stronghold in the next season's campaign.

  By 621, the Byzantines still held a small number of towns. The king Suinthila recovered them swiftly. By 624, the entire mainland province of Spania was in Visigothic hands. The Balearic Islands were the exception, but only nominally. An economic backwater in the 7th century, they were loosely connected to the empire in much the same way Corsica and the Sardinian giudicati were. The islands were not yet lost, but they were drifting.

  During the joint reign of Egica and Wittiza, a Byzantine fleet appeared off the southern coast of Spain. A local count named Theudimer drove it off. The date is disputed: perhaps 697, when the general Leontius led an expedition to relieve Carthage against the advancing Arabs; perhaps 702; perhaps later still. Historians generally agree it was an isolated incident, connected to fighting elsewhere and not an attempt to recover the lost province. The historian Thompson described it with a frank admission: "We know nothing whatever of the context of this strange event." The Balearic Islands were the last fragment of Spania's geography that remained within the Byzantine orbit. Even those would not be severed from the empire until the Saracen incursions of the 8th and 9th centuries.

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