User Story

The continuation of the Arab conquests in Northern Africa crossed the Straits of Gibraltar in 711 AD. In that very year, an Arab-Berber invasion of the Iberian Peninsula began under Umayyad rulership. The last Visigothic king, Roderic, fell in the Battle of Guadalete and his potential successors were also unable to prevent the demise of the Visigothic kingdom. By the 720s, almost the entirety of the Iberian Peninsula had fallen under Umayyad control.

The presence of these cultural and religious ‘Others’ and their actual foreign rule over the former Visigothic kingdom strongly influenced the views of Christian-Iberian chroniclers on Mediterranean history. The first chronicles of Christian authors following the conquest of Hispania deal only in part with mere Iberian history. Being strongly influenced by Byzantine historiography, eastern Mediterranean events from the early seventh century onwards also play a major role in these texts. Hence, Christian-Iberian chroniclers of the eighth and ninth centuries depicted ‘their own’ history to a great extent according to what was actually Byzantine history.

Therefore, subjects like the relationship between Byzantium and the Persians, Byzantium and the Slavs or Byzantium and the Arabs form the main topics of the first Christian-Iberian chronicles that were written after the fall of the Visigothic kingdom, the so-called Byzantine-Arabic Chronicle and Muzarabic Chronicle. To some degree, these chronicles tell the story of the fall of the Visigothic kingdom and the first decades after by beginning with a crucial point in Byzantine history: Heraclius becoming emperor, defeating the Persians but struggling heavily with the Arabs, who had just entered onto the stage of history.

Byzantium, or rather Rome (understood as a role in salvific history), was not able to defeat the Arabs, who, again, spread their power over the eastern and southern shores of the Mediterranean and, in the end, managed to rule over parts of western Europe. Thus, Iberian history of the eighth century has its roots in the Byzantine history of the seventh century.

Another historiographical compilation from Christian authors continues with this historical thinking. The Chronicle of Albelda, a ninth-century universal chronicle written at the Asturian court in Oviedo (Northern Iberia) depicts the world’s history from the Creation onwards. An inevitable chapter in Christian universal history is the history of Rome, which means both actual Rome and Eastern Rome, that is, Byzantium. The Roman Empire, in no matter which epoch, was depicted as the spearhead of Christianity. A universal historical chronicle like the Chronicle of Albelda offers the interpretation of a translatio imperii, a transfer of this leading role from empire to empire. Rome was considered to be the last empire before the Apocalypse would take place. The Chronicle of Albelda depicts the Visigothic kingdom and, in particular, the Asturian kingdom founded in the eighth century, as the successor of Rome, as ‘New Rome’ and, therefore, as the ‘New People of God’. The cultural and religious ‘Other’ and their foreign rule over parts of the Iberian Peninsula were considered to be the divine punishment of God’s people, who had sinned against him.

As in the Biblical templates on which the Chronicles were modelled, the Chosen People, Israel, was always able to regain its status before God, the Asturian chroniclers and compilers also ‘knew’ that the punishment of the ‘New Chosen People’ would come to an end. The Prophetic Chronicle, in most of the surviving witnesses a part of the Chronicle of Albelda, takes this thought and then foretells an end of the foreign rule, in a not too-distant future.