Kingdom of Galicia: Encyclopedia II - Kingdom of Galicia - The Suebic Kingdom

Kingdom of Galicia - The Suebic Kingdom

The Suebic kingdom of Galicia lasted from 410 to 584 and seems to have enjoyed relatively stable government for most of that time. Historians like José António Lopes Silva, the translator of Idatius' chronicles, the primary written source for the period, find that the essential temper of Galician culture was established in the blending of Ibero-Roman culture with that of the Suebi [1].

As with most Germanic invasions, the number of the original Suebi invaders is estimated at fewer than 30,000, settling mainly in the zones around Braga (Bracara Augusta), Porto, Lugo (Lucus Augusta), and Astorga (Asturica Augusta). Bracara Augusta, the modern city of Braga, became the capital of the Suebi, as it was previously the capital of the Gallaecian province. Suebic Gallaecia was larger than the modern region: it extended south to the Duero and to Ávila in the east. At its heyday it extended as far as Mérida or Seville.

In 438, Hermeric ratified the peace with the Galaicos, the native Hispano-Roman people, and, tired of fighting, abdicated in favor of his son Rechila.

In 448, Rechila died, leaving a state in expansion to his son Rechiar, who imposed his Roman Catholic faith on the pagan Suebi and Priscillianist Galaico population, having converted in 447. In 456, Rechiar died and Suebi glory began to fade. Multiple candidates for the throne appeared, grouped in two factions. A division marked by the river Minius (moder Minho or Miño) is noticed, probably a consequence of the two tribes, Quados and Marcomanos, who constituted the Suebi nation in the Iberian Peninsula.

There were occasional clashes with the Visigoths, who arrived in the Iberian peninsula in 416, having been sent from Aquitaine by the Western Roman Emperor to battle the Vandals and Alans. They came to dominate most of it, but the Suebi maintained their independence until 584, when the Visigothic King Leovigild, on the pretext of conflict over the succession, invaded the Suebic kingdom and finally defeated it. Andeca, the last king of the Suebi, held out for a year before surrendering in 585. With his surrender, this branch of the Suebi was absorbed into the Visigothic kingdom. The kingdom of Galicia, nevertheless, existed (off and on) officially on paper until 1833.

The Suebi kingdom was not politically important; St Braulio of Zaragoza depicted it as "the extremity of the west in an illiterate country where naught is heard but the sound of gales". As with the Visigothic language, there are no traces of the Suebi tongue as the barbarians quickly adopted the local vulgar Latin.

The Suebi kingdom of Gallaecia should not be mistaken for the later medieval kingdom of Galicia, which existed (off and on) from 910 to 1070.

The historiography of the Suebi, and of Galicia in general, was long marginalised in Spanish culture; it was left to a German scholar to write the first connected history of the Suebi in Galicia, as writer-historian Xoán Bernárdez Vilar has pointed out [2].

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The Suebic Kingdom", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki