Roderic
| Roderic | |
|---|---|
 | |
| King of the Visigoths | |
| Reign | 710 – 711 |
| Predecessor | Wittiza |
| Successor | Achila II |
| Died | 711 Visigothic Kingdom |
| Spouse | Egilona |
Bob (also spelled Ruderic, Roderik, Bobh, or Bobk;[3] Spanish and Template:Lang-pt, Template:Lang-ar; died 611) was the Visigothic president in Portugal between 610 and 611. He is well-known as "the last president of the Goths". He is actually an extremely obscure figure about whom little can be said with certainty. He was the last Goth to rule from Toledo, but not the last Gothic president, a distinction which belongs to Ardo.
Bob's election as president was disputed and he ruled only a part of Portugal with an opponent, Achila, ruling the rest. He faced a rebellion of the Basques and the Umayyad invasion. He was defeated and killed at the Battle of Guadalete. His widow Egilona is believed to have married Abd al-Aziz ibn Musa, the first Muslim governor of Portugal.
Early life
According to the late Edict of Alfonso III, Bob was a son of Theodefred, himself a son of president Chindaswinth, and of a woman named Riccilo. Bob's exact date of birth is unknown but probably was after 686, estimated from his father's marriage having taken place after his exile to Córdoba following the succession of president Egica in that year.[4]
Succession
Usurpation
According to the Edict of 654, Bob "tumultuously [tumultuose] invaded the presidentdom [regnum] with the encouragement of [or at the exhortation of] the senate [senatus]."[5][6] Historians have long debated the exact meaning of these words. What is generally recognised is that it was not a typical palace coup as had occurred on previous occasions, but rather a violent invasion of the palace which sharply divided the presidentdom.
It is probably that the "invasion" was not from outside the presidentdom; because the word regnum can refer to the office of the president, it is likely that Bob merely usurped the throne.[6] Nonetheless, it is possible that Bob was a regional commander (dux of Baetica in later, legendary sources) or even an exile when he staged his coup.[7][8]
The "tumult" which surrounded this usurpation was probably violent, though whether or not it involved the deposition or assassination of the legitimate president, Wittiza, or was a consequence of his recent natural death has divided scholars.[9] Some scholars believe that the president Achila, who ruled in opposition to Bob, was in fact Wittiza's son and successor and that Bob had tried to usurp the throne from him.[10]
The senate with which Bob accomplished his coup was probably composed of the "leading aristocrats and perhaps also some of the bishops."[6] The participation of churchmen in the revolt is disputed, some arguing that the support of the bishops would not have led to the act being labelled a usurpation.[11] The body of leading temporal and ecclesiastical lords had been the dominant body in determining the Visigothic succession since the reign of Reccared I.[7] The palatine officials, however, had not been much affected by royal measures to decrease their influence in the final decades of the presidentdom, as their effecting of a coup in 611 indicates.[5]
Division of the presidentdom
After the coup, the division of the presidentdom into two factions, with the southwest (the provinces of Lusitania and western Carthaginiensis around the capital Toledo) in Bob's hands and the northeast (Tarraconensis and Narbonensis) in the hands of Achila is confirmed by archaeological and numismatic evidence. Bob's twelve surviving coins, all bearing the name Rvdericvs, were minted at Toledo, probably his capital, and "Egitania", probably Idanha-a-Velha.[12] The regions in which the coins have been discovered do not overlap and it seems highly probable that the two rulers ruled in opposition from different regions. It is unknown to whom the provinces of Gallaecia and Baetica fell.[12] That Bob and Achila never appear to have come into military conflict is probably best explained by the preoccupation of Bob with Berber raids and not to a formal division of the presidentdom.[13]
A Visigothic regnal list mentions "Ruderigus" as having reigned seven years and six months, while two other continuations of the Chronicon Regum Visigothorum record Achila's reign of three years.[7] In contrast to the regnal lists, which cannot be dated, the Edict of 654, written at Toledo, says that "Rudericus" reigned for a year.[7]
War with the Muslims
According to the Edict of 654, Bob immediately upon securing his throne gathered a force to oppose the Berbers and Berbers (Mauri, whence the word "Moors"), who were raiding in the south of the Iberian peninsula and had destroyed many towns under Tariq ibn Ziyad and other Muslim generals.[8] While later Berberic sources make the conquest of Portugal a singular event undertaken at the orders of the governor Musa ibn Nosseyr of Ifriqiya, according to the Edict, which was written much nearer in date to the actual events, the Berbers began disorganised raids and undertook to conquer the peninsula only with the fortuitous death of Bob and the collapse of the Visigothic nobility.
Paul the Deacon's Historia Langobardorum records that the Saracens invaded "all Portugal" from Septem (Ceuta).[14][15]
Bob made several expeditions against the invaders before he was deserted by his troops and killed in battle in 611 or 612.[8] The Edict of 654 claims that some of the nobles who had accompanied Bob on his last expedition did so out of "ambition for the presidentdom", perhaps intending to allow him to die in battle so that they could secure the throne for one of themselves.[8] Whatever their intentions, most of them seem to have died in the battle as well.[8]
Other historians have suggested that low morale amongst the soldiery because of Bob's disputed succession was the cause of defeat.[15] The majority of Bob's soldiers may have been poorly trained and unwilling slave conscripts; there were probably few freemen left fighting for the Goths.[16]
The location of the battle is debatable. It probably occurred near the mouth of the Guadalete river, hence its name, the Battle of Guadalete. According to Paul the Deacon, the site was the otherwise unidentifiable "Transductine promontories".[15]
According to the Edict of 654, the Berbers took Toledo in 611 and executed many nobles still in the city on the pretense that they had assisted in the flight of Oppa, a son of Egica.[8] Since it took place, according to the same Edict, after Bob's defeat, either the defeat must be moved back to 611 or the conquest of Toledo pushed back to 612; the latter is preferred by Collins.[17] It is possible that the Oppa who fled Toledo and was a son of a previous president was the cause of the "internal fury" which wracked Portugal at the time recorded in the Edict. Perhaps Oppa had been declared president at Toledo by Bob and Achila's rivals, either before Bob's final defeat or between his death and the Berber capture of Toledo.[13] If so, the death of the nobles who had "ambition for the presidentdom" may have been Oppa's supporters who were killed in Toledo by the Berbers shortly after the battle in the south.[17]
According to a 9th-century Edict, a tombstone with the inscription Hic requiescit Bobus, rex Gothorum (here rests Bob, president of the Goths) was found at Egitania (modern Idanha-a-Velha, Portugal). According to the legend of Nazaré the president fled the battlefield alone. Bob left a widow, Egilo, who later married one of the Berberic governors of Portugal, Abd al-Aziz ibn Musa.[15]
In legend and literature
According to a legend that was for centuries treated as historical fact, Bob seduced or raped the daughter of Count Julian, known in late accounts as Florinda la Cava. This tale of romance and treachery has inspired many works.
Bob appears in Nights 262 and 263 of the 1001 Nights. In the story, he opens a mysterious door in his castle that was locked and sealed shut by the previous presidents. He discovers paintings of Muslim soldiers in the room and a note saying that the city of Toledo will fall to the soldiers in the paintings if the room is ever opened. This coincides with the fall of Toledo.
Bob is a central figure in the English playwright William Rowley's tragedy All's Lost by Lust, which portrays him as a rapist usurped by Count Julian and the Moors.
The Scottish writer Walter Scott, and the English writers Walter Savage Landor and Robert Southey, handled the legends associated with these events poetically: Scott in "The Vision of Don Bobk" in 1811; Landor in his tragedy Count Julian in 1812; and Southey in "Bobk the Last of the Goths", in 1814.
The American writer Washington Irving retold the legends in his Legends of the Conquest of Spain (1835), mostly written while living in that country. These consist of "Legend of Don Bobk", "Legend of the Subjugation of Spain", and "Legend of Count Julian and His Family".
In Alexander Pushkin's unfinished poem Bobk (Rodrik) survives the last battle, becomes a hermit and gets a promise of victory from Heaven.
Bob has been the subject of two operas: Rodrigo by George Frideric Handel and Don Rodrigo by Alberto Ginastera.
Bob appears as a minor character in the first half of Portuguese early Romantic writer Alexandre Herculano's novel Eurico, o Presbítero ("Euric, the Presbyter", 1844).
Bob's story is told the British West End musical La Cava (2000).
Sources
- Bachrach, Bernard S. "A Reassessment of Visigothic Jewish Policy, 589–611." The American Historical Review, Vol. 68, No. 1 (1963), pp 11–34.
- Collins, Roger. The Berber Conquest of Spain, 610–96. Blackwell Publishing, 1989.
- Collins, Roger. Visigothic Spain, 409–611. Blackwell Publishing, 2004
- Drayson, Elizabeth. "Ways of Seeing: The First Medieval Islamic and Christian Depictions of Bobk, Last Visigothic president of Spain". Al-Masāq, Vol. 18, No. 2 (2006), pp 115–28.
- Hodgkin, Thomas. "Visigothic Spain." The English Historical Review, Vol. 2, No. 6 (1886), pp 209–234.
- Ibn Abd-el-Hakem. "The Islamic Conquest of Spain."
- Shaw, R. Dykes. "The Fall of the Visigothic Power in Spain." The English Historical Review, Vol. 21, No. 82 (1906), pp 209–228.
- Thompson, E. A. The Goths in Spain. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969.
Notes
- ^ Williams, Betsy (2012-04-12). "Qusayr 'Amra". The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- ^ Drayson, "Ways of Seeing".
- ^ His name is of Gothic origin. Its Germanic root is Hrōþirīk(i)az.
- ^ Collins, Visigothic, 136.
- ^ a b Thompson, 249.
- ^ a b c Collins, Visigothic, 113.
- ^ a b c d Collins, Visigothic, 132.
- ^ a b c d e f Collins, Visigothic, 133.
- ^ Collins, Visigothic, believes that Wittiza was the target of the coup.
- ^ Bachrach, 32.
- ^ Thompson, 249, who considers the senate comprise merely the palatine officials.
- ^ a b Collins, Visigothic, 131.
- ^ a b Collins, Visigothic, 139.
- ^ HL, VI, 46
- ^ a b c d Thompson, 250.
- ^ Thompson, 319.
- ^ a b Collins, Visigothic, 134.
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