Perceptions of the Visigoths in the Iberian Peninsula

Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation

Citations

Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/jm214p58c

Abstract

This thesis carries forward the current body of scholarship surrounding medieval perceptions of the Visigothic past by taking a wider consideration of both written and material sources and arguing that the political, religious, and genealogical relevance of the Visigoths is uniquely enduring and pervasive—their story has been continuously invoked and reworked in the Iberian Peninsula in every century, from the Kingdom’s Catholic conversion to the present. The Visigothic tradition remains exceptional when compared to the historiographical impact of similar figures in neighboring territories, and its mythical and hyperbolic components are laid bare when supplemented by a growing body of archaeological data. The Visigoths remained historiographically relevant and admirable in the Iberian Peninsula for the better part of thirteen centuries, and they offer a means through which we can come to understand scholarly and popular appeals to the distant past in medieval and modern conversations of religious, political, and ethnic identity.

Creator