6 - Leadership and Social Cohesion in Merovingian Gaul and Visigothic Spain: The Case of Military Groups

Summary

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to examine the mechanisms used by secular authority and the aristocracy to exert leadership among military groups in Merovingian Gaul and Visigothic Spain. Moreover, the chapter will study how social cohesion was created by kings and elites among armed groups within the aforementioned regna. With that aim, I will examine the manner in which the narrative and legal sources of the period describe and characterize such processes. My hypothesis is that elements such as violence, the control of resources (money, goods, lands, and positions of institutional power), and beliefs and symbols of authority were used by the Merovingian and Visigothic kings and armed groups in order to strengthen leadership and create social cohesion.

Keywords: Merovingian Gaul, Visigothic Spain, military groups, cohesion, identity

Leadership and Armed Groups in Merovingian Gaul and Visigothic Spain

Of all of the post-Roman kingdoms that emerged in Europe after the disappearance of the Western Roman Empire, the Merovingian kingdoms and the Visigothic Kingdom of Toledo were the entities that best managed to endure and consolidate their inner administrative and political structures. These kingdoms experienced both inner political struggles, which involved members of the royal family, and rivalries among the members of the aristocracy. As we shall see in this chapter, both leadership and social cohesion mutually influenced each other.

During the fifth century, the dioceses of Galia and Hispania witnessed the arrival of different non-Roman groups who settled there, sometimes by means of the administrative mechanisms of the imperial bureaucracy, through their negotiations with the inhabitants, or by the use of force. This was the case of the Visigothic and Frankish groups during this period. Both contingents participated actively in the defence of the Western Roman Empire at the orders of the magistri militum on different occasions. At the same time, both contingents engaged in military campaigns in those territories for their own profit. In the case of the Visigoths, this consisted of raiding and besieging cities in Gaul in order to blackmail the Roman authorities – in a way, they occupied those cities and their jurisdictions. Later on, they continued developing some of these strategies of control and influence in Hispania, especially during their campaigns against the Suevi and the bacaudae in the middle of the fifth century.