Visions of Unity after the Visigoths

This study focuses on post-Visigothic Latin chronicles as testimonies of an intense search for models of stability and social cohesion on the Iberian Peninsula. As the principal source of Iberian political thought between the eighth and mid-thirteenth centuries, these texts have long been regarded from the perspective of modern-day national boundaries of a political entity called Spain. From the post-national perspective of Mediterranean studies, which considers Iberian centres of power in cultural contact with the broader world, post-Visigothic Iberian chronicle writing is seen as a cultural practice that seeks to reconcile the imperative of unity and stability with the reality of diversity and social change.

The book examines, firstly, the Andalusi Christian narrative of Visigothic political demise, which originated in Iberian dhimmī communities between the mid-eighth and mid-ninth centuries. Second, it explores the narrative of sovereignty, developed in Asturias-León from the late ninth century onwards. Finally, it examines the historiographical manipulation of both of these traditions in Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada’s Historia de rebus Hispanie (1243).

The ongoing contact between Iberian Latin textual communities and the broader Mediterranean is interpreted as central to both the development of Iberian historical mythology and its historiographical renovation.