Early Medieval Spain

We call the Middle Ages that because they are a time of flux between the powerful Roman Empire and the relatively stable kingdoms that emerged in the 13th century that look not too different from today's map.  In Spain, as elsewhere in Europe, the centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire were marked by change-- migration, religious wars (including the crusades), civil wars, invasion and conquest.  

Just a note on language--  historians use the terms Medieval Period and Middle Ages interchangably; they replace the outdated language of the Dark Ages, and they align with Global Language  of Prehistory, Classical Antiquity, Medieval Period, [Renaissance, in some places] Early Modernism, Modernism and Contemporary Period.   The Medieval Period is the middle epoch of the three traditional divisions of Western history: classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is itself subdivided into the Early, High, and Late Middle Ages. This Post covers the Early Medieval/Middle Ages.

As I mentioned last time, the Roman Empire began to experience fractures and instability beginning in the early 4th century in the common era. The Empire split permanently into the Eastern and Western Roman Empire in 395 ce, and the Western Roman Empire collapsed completely in 476 ce, leaving a power vacuum. On the Iberian Peninsula, from the 3rd century ce, Germanic tribes had made incursions from the north, while the power struggles inside the emperial  administration and variations in the economy in the 4th anc 5th centuries added to the instability. 

Map of the Eastern and Western Roman Empire from the end of the 4th century (about 395ce) giving you a sense of why this may have been too much territory to administer effectively! 

Map of Europe in the 5th century World History.org. 

Additional challenges came from inside.  A new religion,Christianity, had arisen in the Roman province of Judea on the east coast of the Mediterranean, and had spread to pockets on every shore of the Mediterranean by the 4th century. Already by the mid-3rd century, Christian communities had cropped up in the Barcelona area, though the practice of Christianity was still illegal. In the early 4th century ce, Emperor Diocletian led the last and bloodiest season of Roman persecution of Christians, with impacts on Barcelona that we'll find evidence of on our first day in the city. 

content awareness: graphic images and story of Santa Eulalia

The Patron Saint of Barcelona, Saint Eulalia, a 13-year old virgin, died during this period, from torture because of her beliefs.   

Perhaps we will see Bernat Martorelli,'s Martyrdom of Saint Eulalia, 1442–1445 at the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, during out visit on June 24th. note that this image was made more than 1100 years after Eulalie's death. The story of the martyrdom of Eulalia takes place during Diocletian's persecution of Christians. 

Crucifixion of Eulalia on the Barcelona's Cathedral, the Cathedral of the Holy Cross and Saint Eulalia. This sculpture was made more than a thousand years after the Visigoth rule had ended. 

In 313, Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity throughout the empire. The first major Christian church in Barcelona, the Basilica de Sant Crux, was built at the end of the 4th century, at the location where the Barcelona Cathedral now stands. 

We won't see any Visigothic architecture! Here's a rare surviving example from Portugal, from 560 ce, which offers hints of what that first church might have looked like.

Adopting the religion on the rise was not enough to stabilize the Roman Empire. In Roman Hispania, the Visigoths took advantage of unrest to invade the Iberian Peninsula. The Visigoths were from the Balkan region in southern Europe. They were a romanized people (ie, they had been acculturated to Roman governance and cultural practices) and they initially defended Roman traditions and boundaries against incursions from Germanic groups. After the fall of the Roman Empire in 476, the Visigoths took complete charge of  the majority of the Iberian Peninsula, ruling from the 5th to 8th centuries ce as the Visigoth Kingdom.

Map of Mediterranean 476 ce

In Barcelona, the Visigoths were a ruling minority, in power over Hispano-Romans and other minorities on the peninsula.  At first, they were Arian Christians who converted to Christian Catholicism. 

Votive (ie offering) crown of Reccesswith, Visigoth King of Hispania from 649-672. The crown is now in Madrid

The Visigoths were intermittently intolerant of other faiths and peoples throughout their reign. For example, Barcelona had a significant and impactful Jewish population from at least the 4th century. The Romans had, for the most part, permitted or ignored Judaism in Spain, but, from the 7th century, Visigoth rulers to varying degrees restricted and minutely regulated essential practices of the Jewish faith. 

Parts of the Sinagoga Mejor, at left in the above photo, were built in the 3rd or 4th century. It is one of, if not the oldest Synagogue in Europe. It is now a museum of Jewish History, Here are walking directions to the Synagogue/Museum from TOC. (about 20 minutes walk east, in the Jewish Quarter.) Let's keep our eyes peeled for its tiny door.

The original Jewish quarter of Barcelona, known as El Call for the narrow streets in that area, was a thriving part of the city during the Middle Ages, and remains one of the best-preserved Jewish Quarters in Europe. Barcelona Metropolitan gives a brief history of Barcelona's Jewish Quarter from the 7th-14th centuries here, and describes how to find some key locations to see evidence of that history. 

Barcelona's Jewish Quarter was a part of what is today the Gothic Quarter

 

Minority rule by the Visigoths combined with civil war between Visigoth rulers who favored Roman rule to varying to create an opening at the beginning of the 8th century for people of the Muslim faith from North Africa and the Middle East, known as Moors by most in Europe, to take over rule of the Iberian Peninsula from about 711 ce. The area that is now Catalonia was only under Islamic rule for about 85 years before Frankish invaders under Charlemagne took over the area. 

Las Arenas, Barcelona's neo-Mudéjar bullfighting-ring-turned-shopping center, 1900. 

There is no significant extant physical evidence of the Muslim rule in Barcelona. However, train your eye a bit, and you'll begin to see the influence of the architecture of the Islamic world everywhere in the neo-mudéjar (or neo-islamic) architecture in Barcelona. Personally, I'm going to seek out Barcelona's "Alhambra Building" (though you can only visit the outside) as a substitute for getting to go to Grenada to see the actual Alhambra, as well as Antoni Gaudi's most Islamic-influenced building, Casa Vincens, just to the east Barcelona's 'Alhambra' on the map below. 

A guide to how to see the exterior of Barcelona's Alhambra Building

Following the short period of Islamic rule is the period of the Reconquista-- about 500 years of the Middle Ages in Spain when Christians and Muslims were either getting along, battling it out for power over the Peninsula, or fighting off invasion from Frankish peoples from the North. This is also the period of the Crusades. During this time, Barcelona was, for the most part, ruled by Catholic counts with ties to the Carolingian dynasty. 

Knight fighting a foot soldier from a 14th c. manuscript of the Usages of Barcelona, the early declaration of the customs that would become the Catalan Constitutions, the principles that would govern Catalonia. 

I'll pick up with the foundation of Catalonia and the Middle Ages right in Barcelona next time-- and that will take us to some buildings we will officially visit!