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From: John Carmi Parsons< >
Subject: Re: Amalric
Date: 18 Sep 1998 07:09:59 -0700
Leovigild does not appear to have been the son of a king. He was the
brother of King Liuva, who is described as a Gothic noble elected king
at Narbonne upon the death of Athanagild, without male heirs, in 568.
According to Roger Collins, _Early Medieval Spain: Unity in Diversity,
400-1000_ (St Martin's Press, 1995 2nd ed), p. 40, "Claims that the
subsequent king Leovigild was related to [Athanagild] are based upon
spurious later medieval genealogies."
Such later genealogies attempted to establish blood links among all the
Visigothic kings, though few of them were closely related to each other.
The Visigothic kingship was elective, primarily to ensure that a child
would never succeed to the throne. This system also meant that one ruling
family was never able to build up the power of the royal office to the
detriment of the great families.
One example of the blood links cooked up in these unreliable late-medieval and
Renaissance genealogies centers on the son of Leovigild's son Hermengild (d.
586) by Chilperic II's dau. Ingunda. We know that this son, Athanagild,
existed, but what became of him is unknown; we don't in fact know if he even
survived to adulthood. The later genealogies, however, have him wandering as
far afield as Constantinople, where he supposedly married an imperial lady
named Flavia Juliana, by whom he had a son, Artabasto. This last fellow
returned to Spain, married a distant cousin Glaswinda (an otherwise-unknown
dau. of King Chindaswinth) and became the father of King Ervigio r. 680-87.
Ervigio becomes father-in-law of King Egica r. 687-701, and father of Duke
Pedro of Cantabria, supposedly father of Alfonso I of the Asturias r. 739-56.
At least the dates fit, but there's not a shred of evidence to support it.
John Parsons
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