Wamba (king)

Wamba († 681/683 ) was from 1 September to 14 October 672 680 king of the Visigoths.

Throne

Wamba was elected on September 1 672, the death of his predecessor Rekkeswinth, who apparently had no male heirs to the king, allegedly against his resistance. He was already advanced in years. On September 19, 672 he received in the palace church of Toledo, the king anointing as an ecclesiastical ruler consecration. It was the first explicitly attested by sources anointing of a ruler in the Visigothic kingdom ( and throughout European history ), but some historians suspect that there were earlier anointings. Decisive was the model of the Old Testament king anointing. The day that the government commencement However Wamba looked at the day of the election, so he was not the anointing king.

Rioting

After obtaining the kingship Wamba took first a successful campaign against the rebellious Basques and forced them to give hostages.

In the north of the Pyrenees located Reich part Septimania nobles and a part of the clergy rebelled under the leadership of Count Hilderic of Nîmes, in agreement with the neighboring Franks. Against them Wamba sent the army commander Paul. However, Paul went over to the insurgents, and sat down at the head. He settled in Narbonne rise to the king, crowned and anointed, but said he wanted to give the impression of not eliminating desirable Wamba, but a division of the kingdom; in a letter to Wamba, he described himself as " Eastern Kingdoms " and Wamba as the "King of the South". The rebels also Ranosind, the Duke of Tarraconensis in the northeast of the Iberian peninsula belonged. Wamba could throw down the rebellion quickly. He decided not to put to death the captured insurgents. These processes describes the Metropolitan Julian of Toledo in his work Historia Wambae registered ( story of King Wamba ), in which he glorified Wamba.

The uprising of Paul shows that there was a strong separatist movement in the northeast of the Empire. From Julian's presentation also shows that among the Goths on the one hand and the Roman population Septimaniens ( " Gauls ") and the Swiss franc on the other hand, there was hostility and deep mutual contempt. Among other things, Julian threw the " Gauls " with sharp words a positive relationship with the living Septimania Jews before and noted approvingly that Wamba after his victory drove the Jews from Narbonne.

Church policy

Wamba claimed for himself an unusual for that time rule over the church. He avoided to convene an imperial synod, and intervened in the organization of the church, by arbitrarily founded several bishoprics. One of them was a Hofbistum at the palace church of Toledo, with the establishment of the responsibility of the local metropolitans was circumcised.

Military law

Since the campaign had uncovered against Paul shortcomings in the organization of the army, Wamba issued on November 1, 673 a military law, in which he with their followings, but also the bishops and higher clergy undertook not only the nobles for military service and refusal of military service heavy penalties threatened. The law indicates that the Visigoth army consisted mainly of the levy of the nobles, who led their retainers into the field.

Abdication and death

In October 680 Wamba was of Erwig, who became his successor, forced to abdicate. According to a late tradition in the of Alfonso III. commissioned Chronica Adefonsi III. whose credibility is controversial, Erwig mixed him the neurotoxin sparteine ​​in a drink, making him temporarily stunned. Anyway Wamba received the sacrament of penance as a supposedly terminally ill and was after was the custom wearing a religious habit and received the tonsure by the clergy. He was incapable of governing. He signed a document by which he determined Erwig successor, and retired to a monastery. There he died; on file in the opened on November 4, 683 13 Council of Toledo, he is referred to as deceased. The late, emerging only in the history of the Kingdom of Asturias claim that he was still 687 encroached from the monastery in political events is fictitious.

A late, untrustworthy legend, there was the monastery where Wamba spent the last years of his life and was buried in the small town Pampliega ( province of Burgos ). Supposedly Alfonso X spent in the 13th century and the bones Wamba in the Church of Santa Leocadia in Toledo.

Reception

A peculiar role of Wamba in the legend of St. Giles hermit of Saint- Gilles, the alleged first abbot of Saint- Gilles. The oldest surviving biography of this extraordinarily popular early medieval saints dating from the 10th century; as a source for the historic Giles it is almost worthless. The medieval legend, Giles lived in the wilderness; an doe nourished him with her milk. One day the king of the Goths pursued hunting the animal. The doe took refuge with Giles. A downed by Wamba Arrow violated the saints. Giles took no help and no gifts of the king, but hit him before the establishment of the monastery, the first abbot of the hermit was then. In the visual arts of the Middle Ages Giles was a popular motif with the doe. Sometimes it also Wamba was mapped, for example, on frescoes in the Church of St. Rupert in Weißpriach ( Austria ).

In the 17th century the poet Lope de Vega wrote a comedy about Wamba, La comedia de Wamba, dies in the Wamba to Erwigs poison. José Zorrilla y Moral 1847 wrote the play El rey loco ( The Mad King ) in which Wamba as the main character feigns madness and finally throws his crown to the people.

The Austrian writer Erich Hackl 1991 published a story with the title of king Wamba. It is illustrated by Paul Flora and tells the story of the bearded Visigoths, who subjugate a woman village and force the women as beardless to them to be at your service. By ruse to lure the women ultimately, in the long run to free the Goths from their beards and thereby establish justice. The tale has also been published as an audio book.