United States or Saint Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


The first tenant of that throne was Avitus, a nobleman from Gaul, named by the influence of the Visigothic king, Theodorich of Toulouse. He assumed the purple at Arles, on the 10th July, 455.

In Spain, the hidalgo is just the hi d'al Go, the son of the Goth, the descendant of those rude Visigothic conquerors who broke down the old civilisation of Iberian and Romanised Hispania. And so on throughout.

In Italy, Byzantium, France, and Visigothic Spain, important Jewish communities were formed. The medieval intolerance of the Church, though neither so widespread nor so violent as it later became, suffered its first outbreak in that early century. The insignificant numbers of the European Jews and the insecurity of their condition stood in the way of forming an intellectual centre of their own.

He was an exceedingly tall and graceful personage, of that sangre azul which marked high Visigothic descent; golden-haired and fair-skinned, with hands as small and white as a woman's; his lips were delicate but thin, and compressed closely at the corners of the mouth; and his pale blue eye had a glassy dulness.

They were finally subjugated by a Visigothic host, and in 415, Walia, a war-like and ambitious chief, established the West-Gothic kingdom in Spain, on the ruins of the old Roman province. Walia concluded a treaty with the Emperor Honorius, and, putting himself at the head of the brave Goths, in a three-years' war he destroyed or drove the barbarians from the land.

Its effects were first visible in the various codes of law which the barbarous nations promulgated. Such are the Salic, the Ripuarian, the Alemannic, the Burgundian, the Visigothic, and the Lombard laws.

Beaten and kingless, the Goths retreated in great disorder; and Clovis, pursuing his march, arrived without opposition at Bordeaux, where he settled down with his Franks for the winter. When the war season returned, he marched on Toulouse, the capital of the Visigoths, which he likewise occupied without resistance, and where he seized a portion of the treasure of the Visigothic kings.

The Emperor Valens fell, together with nearly the whole of a great Roman army, in the disastrous battle of Adrianople. A Visigothic horde, to the number of two hundred thousand fighting men, had crossed the Danube; and the Huns and Alans, names even more terrible, joined the standards of Fritigern with a countless host of Mongolian cavalry.

Under Tarik from whom Gibraltar, or the mountain of Tarik near which he landed, is named the Arabs crossed into Spain, and for the first time found themselves face to face with the barbarians of the North. In the great battle of Xeres de la Frontera, near the Guadalquivir, in 711, which lasted for three days, the fate of the Visigothic kingdom was decided.

Vandalic had powerfully allured him, and so had Old Burgundian: he had had designs also upon Visigothic, and had finally chosen Lombard rather than the others because the material was not merely defective but also delightfully vague, affording a wide opportunity for genuine philological insight.