Erwig ( la, Flavius Ervigius; after 642 – 687) was a king of the Visigoths in

Hispania Hispania ( la, Hispānia , ; nearly identically pronounced in Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, and Italian) was the Roman name for the Iberian Peninsula and its provinces. Under the Roman Republic, Hispania was divided into two provinces: Hi ...

(680–687).

Parentage

According to the 9th-century ''

Chronicle of Alfonso III The ''Chronicle of Alfonso III'' ( la, Chronica Adefonsi tertii regis) is a chronicle composed in the early tenth century on the order of King Alfonso III of León with the goal of showing the continuity between Visigothic Spain and the later Chris ...

'', Erwig was the son of Ardabast, who had journeyed from the

Byzantine Empire The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

to Hispania during the time of Chindasuinth, and married Chindasuinth's niece Goda. Ardabast (or Artavasdos), was probably an Armenian or Persian Christian exile in Constantinople or in Byzantine Africa. In Hispania he was made a count. Seventeenth-century Spanish genealogist

Luis Bartolomé de Salazar y Castro Luis_Bartolomé_de_Salazar_y_Castro

Hermenegild and Ingund, and his mother as Flavia Juliana, a daughter of Peter Augustus and niece of the Emperor Maurice. This imperial connection is disputed by Christian Settipani, who says that the only source for Athanagild's marriage to Flavia Julia is José Pellicer, who he claims to be a forger.

Succession

After his predecessor Wamba had taken the monastic habit while on the verge of death, he was forced to retire from the kingship on 14 October 680, even though he recovered, and enter a monastery. He appointed Erwig his successor and the latter was anointed in Toledo on 31 October 680. Later, 9th-century legends attributed to Erwig the poisoning of the king, who was made a penitent by his supporters while Erwig's supporters raised him to the throne. The bishops of the Twelfth Council of Toledo, which Erwig opened on 9 January 681, confirmed that the documents of abdication and confirmation of Erwig from Wamba were authentic and contained his own signature. Nonetheless, some historians have seen in the rapidity of Erwig's unction after the king had received the penitential sacrament evidence for a pre-planned palace coup. Erwig began his reign in a climate of uneasiness concerning the way in which he reached the throne. Probably feeling insecure himself, the nobles and bishops took advantage. Erwig restored to favour those who had been out of it in the time of Wamba. After the Twelfth Council, the

Thirteenth In music or music theory, a thirteenth is the note thirteen scale degrees from the root of a chord and also the interval between the root and the thirteenth. The interval can be also described as a compound sixth, spanning an octa ...

(683) and Fourteenth (684) followed in quick succession. The councils confirmed Erwig's legitimacy for a second time and wrote many laws to protect the life and rule of the king and his family, including that of his queen, Liuvigoto. After falling seriously ill, Erwig proclaimed his son-in-law Ergica, the husband of his daughter

Cixilo Cixilo (7th-century – fl. 694) was a Visigoth queen consort by marriage to king Egica (687–702). She was the daughter of Erwig Erwig ( la, Flavius Ervigius; after 642 – 687) was a king of the Visigoths in Hispania (680–687). Parentage ...

, as his heir on 14 November 687 and retired to a monastery as a penitent the next day, after giving leave to his court to return to Toledo with Egica for the anointing and crowning.

Legislation

Erwig issued 28 laws condemning

Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

with the support of the Twelfth Council. He himself stated to the council his desire to return to the legislation of the reign of Sisebut, though he was a little more lenient, dispensing with the

death penalty Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that ...

. These laws were part of a revised and expanded version of the Liber Iudiciorum which is attached to Erwig's name. All of the laws, which dealt with Jews, have been attributed to the influence of

Julian of Toledo Julian of Toledo (642–690) was born in Toledo, Hispania. He was well educated at the cathedral school, was a monk and later abbot at Agali, a spiritual student of Saint Eugene II, and archbishop of Toledo. He was the first bishop to have prim ...

, the fanatically anti-Jewish archbishop of Toledo.Collins, ''Visigothic Spain'', 236. When the Ervigian code was promulgated in November 681, Erwig had added six more of his own new laws and three laws of Wamba, as well as revised eighty laws of Recceswinth. There is no evidence, however, that the Ervigian code "superseded" the Recceswinthian and manuscripts of both continued to be produced and sold. Declaring them a plague on the kingdom, he called for the total removal of the Jews from the kingdom. Such a decree had been issued by Erwig's predecessor Wamba and much as that one Erwig's also failed. So in 681 he issued another decree, this time requiring that all Jews become Christians or leave the kingdom. Jews were officially discriminated against from henceforth as the monarchy attempted to restrict Jewish commercial activities.

Sources

* Collins, Roger. ''Visigothic Spain, 409–711''. Blackwell Publishing, 2004. * Livermore, Harold. ''The Twilight of the Goths: The Rise and Fall of the Kingdom of Toledo, c. 565–711''. Bristol: Intellect, 2006. * Murphy, Francis X
"Julian of Toledo and the Fall of the Visigothic Kingdom in Spain."
'' Speculum'', Vol. 27, No. 1. (January, 1952), pp 1–27. *

Thompson, E. A. Edward Arthur Thompson (22 May 1914 – 1 January 1994) was an Irish-born British Marxist historian of classics and medieval studies. He was professor and director of the classics department at the University of Nottingham from 1948 to 1979 ...

''The Goths in Spain''. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969. * '' Continuité des élites à Byzance durante les siècles obscurs. Les princes caucasiens et l'Empire du VIe au IXe siècle''. 2006. * '' Les ancêtres de Charlemagne. 2nd edition'', 2014

Notes

{{Authority control 640s births 687 deaths 7th-century Visigothic monarchs