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Kingdom of Galicia
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A Kingdom of Galicia (Galician: Reino de Galiza) existed in some form from the time the conquered Roman diocese of Hispania was divided between the Alans, Suebi and Vandals in 411 until the 1833 territorial division of Spain during the regency of María Cristina. The region of Gallaecia had been a Roman province since the administrative reforms of the Tetrarchy (293), and Galicia has been an administrative subdivision of Spain from 1833 to the present, and semi-autonomous since the Galician Statute of Autonomy of 1981.
The first Galician kingdom was the Suebic Kingdom with its capital at Braga. The early history of this kingdom is one of fluctuating boundaries, as the Suebi were not originally ruled by a single monarch and the territory of Roman Gallaecia was shared with the Hasdingi, a Vandalic tribe. The boundaries of the kingdom became more static only with the rise of the Visigothic Kingdom, which conquered the Suebi in 584–85. Galicia was thus absorbed into the Visigothic Kingdom, but it was regularly distinguished from the rest of Hispania and from the province of Septimania north of the Pyrenees. There is slim evidence that sub-kings may have been appointed in Galicia under the later Visigoths, and Galicia alone of all the regions securely controlled by the Visigoths evaded conquest during the Islamic invasion of 711. Subsequently, Galicia was incorporated, through a serious of military campaigns, into the Kingdom of Asturias.
Origin and foundation
The origin of the kingdom lies in the fifth century, when Suebi settled permanently in the former Roman province called Gallaecia. These, led by their king Hermeric (who had signed with the Roman Emperor Honorius a foedus(pact) which conceded them sovereignty in Galicia), have set their capital in the former Bracara Augusta creating the regnum suevorum (Suebi's Kingdom) or Regnum Galliciense in 409. In 449, the first Suebic king who was born in Galicia, Rechiar (son of Rechila, grandson of Hermeric), decided to follow the religious beliefs of most of Galicians, Galicia was converted in the first Catholic kingdom in Europe.
A century later, the differences between Gallaeci and Suebi had disappeared, leading to the systematic use in contemporary terms like Galliciense Regnum[1] (Galician kingdom), and Regem Galliciae[2] (king of Galicia), Rege Suevorum (king of Suebi) or Galleciae totius provinciae rex (king of all Galician province)[3] the bishops as Martin of Braga will be recognized as episcopi Gallaecia[4] (bishop of Galicia). We can therefore speak from the sixth century, the existence of a kingdom of Galicia
Suebic Kingdom
The Suebic kingdom of Galicia lasted from 410 to 584 and seems to have enjoyed relatively stable government for most of that time. In the beginning, Gallaecia was divided between two kingdoms, the kingdom of the Vandals Hasdingi and the kingdom of the Suebi. Latter on, the kingdom of the Hasdingi was conquered by the Suebi when a war broke out between the Vandal Gunderic and the Suebi Hermeric. The Suebi were helped by the Romans and the Vandal army fled to the kingdom of the Silingi Vandals in Baetica. Historians like José Antonio López Silva, translator of Idatius' chronicles, the primary written source for the period, find that the essential temper of Galician culture was established in the blending of Ibero-Roman culture with that of the Suebi [4].
As with most Germanic invasions, the number of the original Suebi invaders is estimated at fewer than 100,000 (the number of the Vandals and Alans that passed into Africa were 50,000-80,000), settling mainly in the zones around modern Northern Portugal and Galicia, mainly in Braga (Bracara Augusta), Porto, Lugo (Lucus Augusta), and Astorga (Asturica Augusta). The valley of the Limia River is thought to have received the largest concentration of germanic settlers. Bracara Augusta, the modern city of Braga, became the capital of the Suebi, as it was previously the capital of the Gallaecian province. Suebic Gallaecia was larger than the modern region: it extended south to the Douro and to Ávila in the east. At its heyday, it extended as far as Mérida or Seville.
In 438, Hermeric ratified the peace with the Galaicos, the native Hispano-Roman people, and abdicated in favor of his son Rechila. In 448, Rechila died, leaving a state in expansion to his son Rechiar, who imposed his Roman Catholic faith on the pagan Suebi and Priscillianist Galaico population, after himself being converted in 447. In 456, Rechiar died and Suebi glory began to fade. Multiple candidates for the throne appeared, grouped in two factions. A division marked by the river Minius (modern Minho) is noticed, probably a consequence of the two tribes, Quadi and Marcomanni, who constituted the Suebi nation in the Iberian Peninsula. Together with the Suebi came another Germanic tribe, the Buri, that settled in the lands known as Terras de Bouro (Lands of the Buri) in what is now Portugal.
There were occasional clashes with the Visigoths, who arrived in the Iberian peninsula in 416, having been sent from Aquitaine by the Western Roman Emperor to battle the Vandals and Alans. They came to dominate most of it, but the Suebi maintained their independence until 584, when the Visigothic King Leovigild, on the pretext of conflict over the succession, invaded the Suebic kingdom and finally defeated it. Andeca, the last king of the Suebi, held out for a year before surrendering in 585. With his surrender, this branch of the Suebi was absorbed into the Visigothic kingdom.
Only after the Visigoths conquered the kingdom of the Suebi in 585, St Braulio of Zaragoza (590 - 651) depicted the region as "the extremity of the west in an illiterate country where nought is heard but the sound of gales". As with the Visigothic language, there are just some traces of the Suebi tongue as the barbarians quickly adopted the local vulgar Latin ( suev. *laiwarika: laverca, lark).
The historiography of the Suebi, and of Galicia in general, was long marginalised in Spanish culture; it was left to a German scholar to write the first connected history of the Suebi in Galicia, as writer-historian Xoán Bernárdez Vilar has pointed out [5].
Visigothic monarchy (585-711)
In 585, Liuvigild, Visigothic king of Hispania and Septimania, ended the political independence of Galicia since Suebi, beating the last Suebi-Galician king Andeca. The territory previously known as Gallaecia (Latin name for ancient Galicia) became a satellite of the power of Toledo, the capital of the Visigoths after their displacement from Gaul by the Franks. The government of the Visigoths in Galicia was a no abrupt change, and, contrary to what is observed in Lusitania, Galician dioceses (Braga, Porto, Tui, Iria, Britonia, Lugo, Ourense, Astorga, Coimbra, Lamego, Viseu and Idanha) continued to operate with normality.
"Finally, when the moment was propitious, Leovigild killed his son. After the death of Miro, King of Galicia, his son Eboric and his son-in-law Audeca from the kingdom with which was fighting, Leovigild subjugated Suebi and all people of Galicia under the power of the Goths."
Chronicle of Fredegar, cit., III. p 116. Years 658-660[5].
The territorial organization inherited from previous centuries did not change and the cultural, religious, and aristocratic elite accepted new monarchs. Thus, in the religious councils, such as that held in 589 in Toledo, were presented episcoporum totius Hispaniae, Galliae and Gallaetiae ("all bishops of Spain, Gaul, and Galicia").[6] This design was tripartite throughout Visigothic government since 585, a variety of differentiating the three entities following documents: fines Span, Gallie, Gallec[7] or Spaniae and Galliae vel Gallitiae[8], among others. In this context, the remarkable development Fructuosus of Braga´s activity, Galician-Visigothic Bishop[9], known for the many foundations that he established throughout the west of the Iberian peninsula, generally in places of difficult and austere access such as mountains or islands.