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The Catholic Visigothic kingdom 353

military successes of Suinthila were even greater against the Byzantines. Accord-

ing to Isidore, Suinthila attained a triumph superior to that of all other kings,

since he was the ﬁrst king to reign over the whole of inter-oceanic Hispania,

which suggests that it was he who put an end to the presence of the Byzantines

in the Peninsula, an event normally dated to between 623 and 625.

Suinthila associated his son Recimer with the throne, but both father and

son were deposed in 631 in a coup mounted by the nobleman Sisenand, with the

help of the Frankish king, Dagobert. The Frankish king dispatched an army

from Toulouse, which under the command of Abundancio and Venerando

reached Saragossa, where Sisenandwas proclaimed king by the Goths. Fredegar,

who supplies this information, claims Suinthila was an iniquitous king whom

the Goths had come to hate. This is in contrast to Isidore’s earlier elegies, which

described him as receiving the sceptre through divine grace, and attributed to

him all the virtues of a good ruler, calling him the ‘father of the poor’. The

contrast can be explained by a deterioration in Suinthila’s relationship with the

church and the nobility in the last years of his reign. At the Fourth Council

of Toledo in 633, which legitimated Sisenand’s seizure of power and whose

instigator was Isidore of Seville, Suinthila was accused of all sorts of iniquity.

The Council attempted to force him to make a formal renunciation of his

power. The deposed king did not lose his life, but he and his family were

excommunicated and exiled, and their goods were conﬁscated. Their property,

said the fathers of the council, had been acquired through exactions from the

poor. In the seventh century this was equivalent to saying that it had been

taken from the church.

the sacralisation of royalty and institutional

development

It is necessary to place Suinthila’s deposition in the context of the tensions

between the nobility and the king in defending their respective interests. As

has been seen, the system of association with the throne, a formula inspired

by late Roman and contemporary Byzantine models, was not enough to put

an end to violent deposition. The latter not only undermined royal authority

but also endangered the stability of the kingdom, by exposing it to interfer-

ence from traditionally hostile forces, like those of the Frankish kings. In the

reigns that followed the ousting of Suinthila, the political scene was domi-

nated by conciliar activity, which sought a way out of this conﬂict between

nobility and monarchy, by strengthening the institution of monarchy and reg-

ulating the process of accession to the throne. The church, far from acting as

arbiter, achieved this conjointly with the nobility and through these councils

Vallego Girv

es (1993), p. 307.

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354 a. barbero and m. i. loring

reinforced its own role as well as that of the nobility in the running of the

kingdom.

The ﬁrst of these councils was convened by Sisenand (631–636), with the

object of legitimating his accession to the throne. Isidore of Seville was the key

ﬁgure at this, the Fourth Council of Toledo held in 633, and the political and

religious doctrine developed there can be attributed to him. Despite the fact

that one of the objectives of the council was to legitimate Sisenand’s seizure of

power, it attempted at the same time to avoid further acts of violence, which

might endanger the kings and the stability of the Gothic kingdom. Canon 75

began by recalling the sacred character of the oath of loyalty sworn to the king,

and that he who broke this accord with the king equally broke faith with God

in whose name the promise was made. It decreed that whoever violated their

oath would be excommunicated. Likewise, it insisted on the sacred nature of

royalty and the divinely elected status of the monarch, in the light of which

no one should make an attempt on his life: nolite tangere Christos meos, the

fathers remembered. It was also prescribed that kings should die peacefully and

that their successors should be chosen by the nobility and bishops, an elective

principle developed by later councils.

This council had important consequences for the life of the Visigothic

church and kingdom, through its institution of national councils. Although

the series of general councils was initiated during the Third Council of Toledo,

it was the fathers of the Fourth Council who decided that the meetings should

be held on a regular basis, differentiating them from the provincial ones and

indicating that they would have to meet to consider questions of faith or mat-

ters common to all the churches. These councils met on eleven occasions,

always convened by the kings, who besides calling upon the bishops to correct

abuses in the ﬁeld of discipline and dogma, also submitted to the deliberation

of the assembly, in the so-called tomus regius, all those questions considered of

signiﬁcance in the government of the kingdom.

The work of these councils

was in this sense not limited to ecclesiastical questions, but extended to ques-

tions of political interest in conformity with the theoretical principles, which

defended a harmonious unity between spiritual and temporal power, already

apparent at the Third Council of Toledo.

During the brief reign of Chintila (636–639) two Toledan councils were

held, the Fifth and Sixth. At the Fifth Council, held at the beginning of the

The series of Toledan Councils began with III in 589 and terminated with XVIII in 702.However IX

and XI had a provincial character and XIV concerned itself solely with theological matters. The acts

from XVIII are not extant; the acts of these councils are one of the principal sources of information

on the Visigoth kingdom of Toledo. On the Toledan Councils cf. Abadal (1962–3), pp. 69–93, and

Orlandis and Ramos-Liss

on (1986); acts ed. Vives (1963).

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The Catholic Visigothic kingdom 355

reign in 636, the subjects of public interest tackled at the previous Council

were almost the only things dealt with. The canons, on the one hand, insisting

on the inviolable character of the person of kings, prohibited attempts on their

lives and attacks on their descendants or goods, and on the other hand, with

the object of avoiding further conspiracies, proscribed excommunication for

those who during the life of a king intrigued concerning the succession. To

reinforce this, they declared it obligatory for future councils to read canon 75

of the Fourth Council, which had dealt with these questions for the ﬁrst time.

They also established that kings had to be chosen from the Gothic nobility,

and heirs to the throne were not allowed to deprive the ﬁdeles regum of goods

received from princes or acquired justly in recognition of their ﬁdelity.

Tw oyears later, at the Fourth Council of Toledo in 638, these issues were

again raised and it was decided that the ﬁdeles regum could not be dispossessed

of public posts and that they not only could keep goods received from princes,

but also transmit them to their descendants unless they failed to provide ﬁdele

obsequium et sincerum servitium,broke their oath of ﬁdelity to the monarch or

failed to carry out their functions. The fathers present concluded that it was

more just still that the churches of God keep goods conceded by princes to the

church permanently in their dominion, since they were the nourishment of

the poor. The Synod also insisted again on the inviolable nature of the king,

his descendants and goods, setting down that anyone making an attempt on

his life ought to be avenged by his successor, who would otherwise be a party to

the crime. Finally, in relation to the succession, further restrictions were added

to ways in which the throne might be obtained. No one could become king

if he had seized the throne by force, had been tonsured in a religious habit or

shamefully shaved, or were of servile or foreign origin.

The reigns of Sisenand and Chintila represent a milestone in the institu-

tional political development of the Visigothic kingdom. Subsequent Toledan

Councils reinforced the institution of monarchy, through the sacralisation of

the royal person: it is probable that the practice of anointing kings was insti-

tuted for the ﬁrst time at the Fourth Council of Toledo. Royal unction was a

ritual act, conferring divinely elected status, which, inspired by biblical prece-

dents, the Visigothic ecclesiastics adopted. It also reinforced the cohesion of

the kingdom, by sacralising in turn the link which tied subject to king through

the oath of ﬁdelity. Possibly of Germanic origin, the oath was seen as a highly

important addition to the ancient obligations not to conspire against the king

and the patria of the Goths. More positive aspects were developed: i.e. the

ﬁdeles regum were also obliged to defend the life and interests of the king and

kingdom.

On the content and scope of the oath of ﬁdelity, Barbero and Vigil (1978), pp. 126–54.

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356 a. barbero and m. i. loring

In parallel, these synods gave religious backing to the participation of the

nobility and church in the government of the realm and strengthened their

ﬁscal rights. They favoured an elective system, which entrusted the election of

the king jointly to the church and nobility, and they conﬁrmed the rights of the

ﬁdeles regum to receiveproperties and hold ofﬁces in recognitionof their ﬁdelity.

It is important to underline that the ﬁdes or ﬁdelitas,which united subjects

and king (including clerics), was an expression of a tie of personal dependency

that not only entailed obligations towards the king and the kingdom, but also

implied responsibilities on the part of the monarch to the ﬁdeles regum.

Despite the precautions taken in the previous councils to avoid accession

to the throne by force, another, fortunately bloodless, plot soon followed.

According to Fredegar, King Chintila proposed his son as his successor before

his death. The young Tulga was elected king, but in the third year of his reign he

was deposed and tonsured as a cleric, which in accordance with the prescription

of the Fourth Council of Toledo disqualiﬁed him deﬁnitively from kingship.

In his place the noble Chindasuinth was promoted to command of the realm

by numerous Gothic ‘senators’ and a large part of the people.

the reigns of chindasuinth and reccesuinth

The reigns of Chindasuinth and his son Reccesuinth cover a long period (642–

672) during which both carried out extensive legislative work culminating in

the promulgation of the Liber Iudiciorum,agreat compilation of law initiated

by Chindasuinth and completed by Reccesuinth in 654.

The new Code

incorporated numerous laws described as antiquae. These were mostly revisions

from the Code of Leovigild, with some from Reccared and Sisebut. A good

number were new laws by Chindasuinth and Reccesuinth, although some

of these had been taken with minor modiﬁcations from the old laws of the

Breviarium Alarici.

The new Code superseded all earlier law not included in

it, especially the Roman laws from the Breviarium Alarici. The Liber Iudiciorum

cannot however be considered a code that was Germanic in character,given that

it was conceived within a Roman juridical tradition, and employs the concepts

The Liber Iudiciorum was published by Zeumer (1902) together with other Visigothic codes under

the title Lex Visigothorum.Visigothic legislation has been the subject for a long time of a polemic

between the partisans arguing for its territorial character, cf. Garc

ıa Gallo (1942–43) and (1974) and

D’Ors (1956), and those distinguishing an earlier phase characterised by the national status of law

from a second involving its territorial scope, inaugurated by the Liber Iudiciorum,cf. Thompson

(1969), pp. 57–8, King (1972), pp. 6–18, and P

erez Prendes (1991), pp. 71–8.

The ninety-nine laws of Chindasuinth and eighty-seven of Reccesuinth constitute one important

source of information for these two reigns, to which can be added that provided by the conciliar

acts and to a lesser extent by Fredegar and the Mozarabic Chronicle of 754.

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The Catholic Visigothic kingdom 357

of Roman law, only exceptionally applying principles from Germanic law.

Its

promulgation responded to the need to adjust the mass of laws, accumulated

over two centuries, to prevailing social conditions. Old laws, which no longer

had any social relevance, were changed. Among the laws of Reccesuinth it is

worth noting the rigour of those against the Jews, in which the celebration

of Passover and other rites such as circumcision were proscribed. In the next

reigns new laws were incorporated into the Liber, and under Ervig a new revised

version was published.

The laws of the Liber Iudiciorum reveal that a considerable proportion of

the Hispano-Gothic population continued living in slavery, and that freed-

men were numerous given the frequency with which they appear, but there

is no mention of tenant farmers. This silence, when the existence of coloni

is attested from a conciliar source of 619, has been linked to a deterioration

in the situation of tenant farmers who, besides being tied to the land, were

bound to their dominus in such a way that legislators ended up disregarding

the slight distinction existing between them and slaves, including them all in

the category of servi.

This interpretation is consonant with the evolution of

the condition of freedmen, whose dependence in relation to the manumitter

saw itself progressively reinforced and was eventually perpetuated beyond the

lifetime of the manumitter and freedman, being passed on to their respective

descendants. This strengthening of the bonds of dependence also stretched to

the free in patrocinio, who as freedmen received goods from their patroni,over

which they had limited powers of disposition, lending services in exchange.

Their dependence also tended to be hereditary.

From this it emerges that the

ties of dependence of persons in slavery or servitude, who for the most part

worked on the agrarian estates of their lords, were reinforced to the beneﬁt of

a minority of domini vel patroni.

The pre-eminence of this social group was

expressed in the juridical ﬁeld, Visigothic legislation differentiating between

nobles and simple free men when it came to the determination of punishment

and monetary compensation, always higher for the maiores and capable of

resulting in the loss of liberty in the case of the humiliores.

The legislation included in the Liber Iudiciorum also reﬂected innovations in

the ﬁeld of territorial administration, characterised by a deﬁnitive superseding

of the old distinction between military and civil administration, along the same

Zeumer (1944), p. 81.

King (1972), p. 161.

Barbero de Aguilera and Vigil (1978), pp. 22–33.

In current historiography, the hypothesis that the regime of slavery was strengthened under the

barbarian monarchs, and certainly the slaves did not disappear, has arisen. In our opinion, however,

the reduction to servitude of the free peasant population through relations of patronage was more

signiﬁcant, cf. Loring and Fuentes (1998).

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358 a. barbero and m. i. loring

lines as was occurring in Byzantium.

Thus, by the time of Chindasuinth’s

reign, the duces provinciae had added to their old military powers others of a

juridical kind, displacing the old rectores, who are no longer mentioned. At

alower level, this evolution had begun earlier. The comes civitatis had been

assuming military, judicial and ﬁnancial powers since their appearance at the

time of the Visigothic kingdom of Toulouse, powers that had been growing

anyway as the old Roman magistracies disappeared, although the defensor civi-

tatis is mentioned as late as the reign of Reccesuinth. Subordinate to the comes

were two other government agents, the vicarius comitis and thiufadus. The latter

was originally the chief of a military unit of a thousand men, and like the dux

augmented his sphere of action with juridical competencies. It is possible that

by this time the duces and thiufadi also had ﬁnancial responsibilities, although

they are not mentioned until a 683 decree annulling the tributes of Ervig. Some

duces appear already to have held the ofﬁce of comes cubiculariorum and other

court posts, such as comes scanciarum, ofﬁces related to the private estate of the

monarch, no doubt destined to resolve the problem of maintaining an army.

Also innovatory were the important powers dependants or slaves of the king,

servi ﬁscales, came to exercise as administrators of the resources of the ﬁsc and

royal estates, which even included responsibilities for certain services of the

ofﬁcium palatinum (an administrative organ made up of different departments

in the service of the king and central administration of the kingdom) at whose

head were magnates with the title comes. The kings found in this a solution to

their need to rely on a loyal bureaucracy with which to balance noble power.

The acts of the Thirteenth Council of Toledo of 683, which attempted to put

an end to the monopolisation of these functions by slaves and freedmen, testify

to this. The solution was very similar to that put into practice in Byzantium,

where the cubiculum was increasingly powerful at the expense of other services

of the central administration, precisely because it was staffed by slaves and

eunuchs.

The governmentof Chindasuinth (642–653) was hard and energetic. Accord-

ing to Fredegar, he suppressed the nobility, ordering the execution of 200

primates and 500 mediocres, exiling others, and handing over their wives and

daughters, together with their patrimony to his ﬁdeles. Chindasuinth provided

himself with legal means to carry out his policies, strengthening royal power

and, in the second year of his reign, he promulgated a law against fugitives and

those accused of high treason and conspiracy.

It made those who took part

in attempts against the government of the king and Goth people liable to the

We do not share the opinion of Thompson (1969), p. 216, who considers these innovations the result

of political measures to deprive the Hispano-Romans of their political power. Cf. the detailed study

of the Visigothic kingdom’s administration in Garc

ıa Moreno (1974a).

Barbero and Vigil (1978), pp. 84–5.

LV ii.1.8,pp.53–7.

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The Catholic Visigothic kingdom 359

death penalty and conﬁscation of properties. The rigour of the law was such

that, in the case of reprieve, the king could only commute the death penalty

to blinding and the restitution of a twentieth part of the conﬁscated goods.

Furthermore, to the end of ensuring greater observance of the law, important

dignitaries, lay as well as ecclesiastical, were made to swear a special oath. Two

years later in 646, Chindasuinth convened the Seventh Council of Toledo

where the seriousness of these actions was discussed and it was set down that

clergymen committing such offences would be punished by excommunication

and removal from ofﬁce. The pain of excommunication was similarly extended

to include laymen. It also insisted on the obligation of clerics to keep the ﬁdelity

owed to the king, reminding them of their obligation to respect the promises

sworn and not to break them by consenting to the proclamation of another

monarch. Chindasuinth was a king who, because of his rigour, was treated

harshly by his contemporaries. Hence, Eugenius of Toledo composed a poem

about him, whose epitaph described him as impious, unjust and immoral.

However, he had friendships with other prominent clerics, like the Saragossan

Braulio, by whom he was advised in political affairs such as that of his son’s

association with the throne, and who was his collaborator in legislative mat-

ters. Besides his legislative work, it is necessary to attribute to this monarch

the reorganisation of the exchequer, which no doubt beneﬁted from the con-

ﬁscations he made from the nobility, and probably from greater efﬁciency in

tax collection. During his reign the law and weight of coinage improved in

comparison to earlier times, evidence of this reorganisation.

Chindasuinth, in keeping with his policy of strengthening royal power,

associated his son with the throne in 649,yet another attempt to establish a

royal dynasty. In fact Reccesuinth did succeed him on his death in 653, although

the succession was far from being peaceful. A Visigoth noble, Froya, tried to

seize the throne and in alliance with the Basques led an expedition into the Ebro

valley, laying siege to Saragossa.

The reign of Reccesuinth (653–672) signiﬁed

a change in the relationship of the nobility and church to royal power. In the

ﬁrst months of his reign, the new king single-handedly convoked the Seventh

Council of Toledo, held in December 653, whose principal task was to revise the

politics of his father. This council was attended by the majority of the bishops,

and next to them, for the ﬁrst time (if we except the Gothic nobles who abjured

Arianism at the Third Council), a group of abbots and lay magnates from the

ofﬁcium palatinum.Their presence, habitual thenceforward, was an innovation

that gave still greater cohesion to the proceedings of the church and nobility.

In accordance with its task of revision, the council discussed the possibility

Grierson (1979), xii,p.86.

On the succession of Chindasuinth, cf. Orlandis (1977), pp. 168–9.

360 a. barbero and m. i. loring

of reducing the sentences for those accused of high treason according to the

law against expatriates and traitors. After long argument mercy prevailed over

the inconveniencies of breaches of an oath made in the name of God. Then

the conditions, which all good governors must fulﬁl, were discussed. It was

speciﬁed that the accession to the throne ought to be elective, and effected

by the bishops and court magnates in Toledo, or wherever the king had died.

Finally, the conciliar assembly functioned as a high tribunal and issued a decree

in which, after voicing strong criticism of the greed of princes, it went on to

make a distinction between goods acquired by Chindasuinth after ascending

the throne and those which he had possessed before, through inheritance or

legitimate acquisition. According to the decision of the assembly, the latter

would pass to his descendants, but the former could only be possessed by

Reccesuinth as royal patrimony, ‘in such a way that everyone may receive that

which is justly owed him, and the rest may be employed according to the will

of the prince for the relief of his subjects’.

These latter measures werecrucial for the interests of the nobility and church,

who were concerned as much to put an end to the excessive exaltation of one

family and prevent the royal dignity from being perpetuated down one lin-

eage, as to guarantee their own access to the enjoyment of properties from the

ﬁsc, which were ‘justly owed’ to them, and counterbalance the fealty which

was established by the ﬁfth and sixth Councils of Toledo. Another law of

Reccesuinth’s, promulgated at the council, strengthened the regulations of the

conciliar assembly, making guarantees so that henceforward nobody could be

arbitrarily deprived of their goods by princes, and ﬁxing formulas by which

abusive conﬁscations could be restored. Furthermore, coinciding with the con-

ciliar decree, the law also established that all goods acquired by the king since

the reign of Suinthila, if they had not been disposed of by testament, ought to

pass into the royal patrimony and be at the disposition of the successors to the

throne.

wamba, ervig and military reforms

The reign of Wamba (672–680), successor of Reccesuinth, is one of the best

known of all the kings of Visigothic Spain, thanks to the Historia Wambae,

written by the Toledan bishop Julian, who was the king’s contemporary. The

Historia begins with the election of Wamba, which took place on the day of

Reccesuinth’s death, at G

erticos, a small place about 190 kilometres from the

royal city. Wamba did not receive royal unction until nineteen days later in

‘ita ut iuste sibi debita quique percipat, et de reliquis ad remedia subiectorum...principis voluntas

exerceat’, Vives (1963), p. 292.

The Catholic Visigothic kingdom 361

Toledo. The anointing, the ﬁrst for which there is evidence, although it can

be inferred from the language of Julian that the ritual was already known, was

performed by the metropolitan, Quirico.

That year Wamba had to face an uprising in Septimania headed by Ilderic,

comes of N

ımes. Wamba sent the dux Paul to suppress it, but he in turn rebelled,

taking with him an important sector of the nobility of Tarraconensis.Paul made

a pact with Ilderic and his followers, and proclaimed himself king in Narbonne.

He was anointed and wrote a letter to Wamba, entitling himself Flavius Paulus

unctus rex orientalis.Hethen sought new allies amongst the traditional enemies

of the Visigoths, such as the Franks and Basques.

At that time Wamba was

ﬁghting the Basques, whom he subdued after a rapid campaign, obliging them

to accept a peace with a hand-over of hostages and payment of tributes. Later

the king made for Gaul and, after subjugating the cities of Barcelona and

Gerona in Tarraconensis, divided his army into three with the objective of

crossing the Pyrenees by three different passes, and occupying the fortresses

guarding them. In Narbonensis,hereunited the army, took Narbonne and other

cities, and ﬁnally occupied N

ımes, where Paul had taken refuge, and where

he gave himself up. The victorious campaign did not end in the execution of

the rebels but, granting the petition of the bishop of Narbonne for clemency

for himself and the others implicated, Wamba pardoned them. When the king

returned to Toledo and made his triumphal entry, Paul and his accomplices

were led into the city in triumph, and paraded through the streets in public

ignominy.

As a result of the rebellion, and a little after his victory over Paul, Wamba

promulgated a law proposing a reorganisation of the army.

Tw o parts can

be distinguished: one treating attacks coming from the outside and the other,

internal rebellions.In the ﬁrst part it was laid down that bishops, clerics of what-

ever degree, military chiefs, the dux, comes, thiufadus, uicarius and gardingus,

and anyone from the territory where the attack had taken place, or neighbour-

ing territories within a 160 kilometre radius, had to help in the defence of the

realm once the dux, comes, thiufadus or uicarius had made the danger known.

They wereall obliged to arrive with all their forces. If they did not fulﬁl this obli-

gation, and damage was done and captives taken in the provinces in question,

For the Frankish involvement in the revolt, Fouracre, chapter 14 below.

LV ix.2.8,pp.370–3.Onthis law and the later one of Ervig, cf. Barbero and Vigil (1978), pp. 140–50,

and P

erez S

anchez (1989), pp. 155–74.

The gardingos, according to S

anchez Albornoz (1974), i,pp.77–88,were armed clients of the royal

retinue derived from the Germanic comitatus, similar to the Merovingian antrustiones; although here

they appear to be endowed with military command. The sources, however, do not allow us to relate

them to the rest of those responsible for administration: Wamba’s law does not cite them together

with the other dignitaries entrusted with the carrying out of the call to arms.

362 a. barbero and m. i. loring

they were to be punished. The bishops and other high-ranking clergy had to

pay compensation from their own estates for the damage caused, or be exiled,

whilst lower-ranking clergy and laymen of whatever degree lost their capacity

to make legal depositions, and were consigned to servitude and left at the mercy

of the royal will, their properties being conﬁscated to compensate those who

had lost out. In the second case, of internal rebellion, the penalty was equally

harsh for lay people and bishops: conﬁscation of goods and exile.

The text of this law testiﬁes to a phenomenon of undoubted signiﬁcance:

that the Visigothic army in the last decades of the seventh century had still not

completely lost its public character, given that it was regulated by laws deter-

mining the authority of military chiefs, in whose hands ofﬁcial announcements

lay. It was made up of troops of diverse origin, both public and private. The

military chiefs of the Visigothic kingdom could hold permanent troops under

orders, and increase their forces with men recruited from the huge estates,

which were their personal property or possessed by means of their ofﬁce. In

addition to these armies were the armed retinues of churchmen, recruited in

the same way, and those of great landowners who did not hold public ofﬁce.

The reign of Wamba was brusquely interrupted in October 680 by a plot,

which was carried out bloodlessly and by apparently legal means. According to

the acts of the Twelfth Council of Toledo celebrated several months later, the

king, being seriously ill, had in the presence of important palace dignitaries

received absolution and with it the religious habit and tonsure. In accordance

with the prescription of the Sixth Council of Toledo this disqualiﬁed him from

continuing to occupy the throne. Apparently Wamba also signed documents,

examined in detail by the conciliar assembly, in which he chose Ervig as his

successor and requested the metropolitan of Toledo, Julian, to anoint him

without delay. However, an Asturian chronicle from the end of the ninth

century relates that Wamba was drugged and the conspirators tonsured him

and dressed him in a religious habit, thus leaving him obliged to renounce

public life and live as a monk until the end of his days. This version of the

deposition of Wamba seems the more plausible, since in its second canon the

fathers present at the Twelfth Council of Toledo discussed those who had

received penance when unconscious, declaring, in clear allusion to the king

Wamba, that ‘those who in whatever way they received penance, may never

return to put on the military insignia’.

The deposition of Wamba must be related to the serious consequences his

law on military obligations had for the church and nobility. His successor Ervig

(680–687) set about revising the law at the beginning of his reign, although

‘hos qui qualibet sorte poenitentiam susceperint ne ulterius ad militare cinculum redeant’, Vives

(1963), p. 389.