730 visions and dreams
in 378 and had sacked ROMEin 410 under the kingship
of ALARICI. After absorbing other tribal groups, they cre-
ated a kingdom that extended under King Euric (r.
466–84), from the Loire and the Rhône into the Iberian
Peninsula. They played an important role in stopping the
advance of the HUNSinto Gaul in 451. Alaric’s successor,
Alaric II (r. 484–507), was defeated at the Battle of
Vouille in 507 by the king of the FRANKS,CLOVIS, and the
kingdom was obliged to retreat into SPAIN, retaining
north of the Pyrenees of only parts of southeastern
FRANCE.
This Visigothic kingdom had a problematic existence
because of a stable rule of uncontested succession, so no
early dynasty managed to impose itself permanently.
Kingship became and remained a objective in factional
rivalries. King Leovigild (r. 568–86) tried to unify the
peninsula, made his capital at TOLEDO, struck gold coins,
and wore a royal crown. The ARIANISMof the Visigoths
did not promote unity within their state. RECAREDI con-
verted to Catholicism at the Council of Toledo in May
- This conversion gave the dynasty more legitimacy
by a religious ceremony of consecration and gained the
backing of the powerful local episcopacy. The final
decades of the seventh century began a period of decline
with economic and social troubles, including famines in
680–87 and plagues in 687–702. There was increasing
fiscal pressure and after the conversion to Catholicism
there were harsh policies against the Jews, who had once
supported the kingdom. Aristocratic rivalries over succes-
sion grew more intense. All this made it easy for a quick
Muslim conquest, which swept into the peninsula in
April of 711. In a few years the Muslims controlled nearly
the whole peninsula and the Visigothic people were
absorbed into its population. Their kingdom, the only
barbarian kingdom favorable to intellectual life, vanished
but left a heritage in canon law, art, and culture.
See also ATTILA, KING OF THE HUNS; ISIDORE OF
SEVILLE; JUSTINIANI, BYZANTINE EMPEROR; SEVILLE, CITY
AND KINGDOM OF; STILICHO; ULPHILAS.
Further reading:P. D. King, Law and Society in the
Visigothic Kingdom (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1972); E. A. Thompson, The Visigoths in the Time of
Ulfila (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1966); E. A.
Thompson, The Goths in Spain(Oxford: The Clarendon
Press, 1969); Joyce E. Salisbury, Iberian Popular Religion,
600 B.C. to 700 A.D.: Celts, Romans, and Visigoths(New
York: E. Mellen Press, 1985); Norman Roth, Jews, Visig-
oths, and Muslims in Medieval Spain: Cooperation and Con-
flict(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994).
visions and dreams Visions and dreams in the Mid-
dle Ages were considered to be real and even divinely
inspired, but just as likely chimeras or foolish or malevo-
lent fantasies. Dreams and visions were plentiful in
the Hebrew Bible and less so in the Christian Bible. Yet
biblical Judaism was distrustful of deriving meaningful
interpretations of reality or divinely inspired readings of
God’s intent from visions or dreams. The classical late
antique world was somewhat more favorably disposed to
their meaningfulness, partially because of the possible
direct roles of the gods in the lives of humans and their
places in religious culture such as at oracles, but Cicero
considered interpreting them as meaningful to be mere
superstition. Christianity was more skeptical, even suspi-
cious they could be diabolical. Part of this distrust was
based on their possible experience and interpretation as
being outside the control of the clergy, contrary to reason,
and possibly violative of the traditions and dogmas of the
church. Pope GREGORYI THEGREATdistinguished five
causes of dreams, which became the common modes of
viewing them and their interpretation for the rest of the
Middle Ages. Dreams could be caused by excessive eat-
ing, by the promptings of the devil, by mere reflection on
or obsession with the concerns of daily life, by divine
inspiration, or by a more specific obsession or preoccupa-
tion of the sleeper or visionary. These skeptical concepts
overflowed into a distrust of the visions experienced or
perceived by saints, mystics, or any Christians.LITERARY VISIONS
With the passage of time visions in the Middle Ages were
defined as a literary genre and as a form of perception
and contact with another world. As literary modes of
expression they resembled allegory. Individuals visited
HELL, LIMBO, PARADISE, and PURGATORY in an ecstasy,
dream, or journey to the other world. Visions could be
deemed flashes of intuition and representations of a sym-
bolic universe, echoing personal spiritual experiences.
Remaining problematic in the eyes of the church, they
could sometimes now be seen as morally valuable, pro-
moting access to the contemplation of scenes from
Christ’s life and Passion or to episodes from the life of the
Virgin MARY. They were tamed as these literary and
explicitly imaginary devices or entertaining and didactic
stories. Preachers in the later Middle Ages were not reluc-
tant to use them as good yarns in sermons to set the stage
for warnings about the consequences of an immoral life.
See also ALIGHIERI, DANTE; ANGELA OF FOLIGNO;
BIRGITTA OFSWEDEN, SAINT; CATHERINE OFSIENA, SAINT;
GERSON,JOHN; MYSTICISM, CHRISTIAN; PREACHING AND
PREACHERS.
Further reading:Paul Edward Dutton, The Politics
of Dreaming in the Carolingian Empire(Lincoln: Univer-
sity of Nebraska Press, 1994); S. F. Kruger, Dreaming in
the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1992); Isabel Moreira, Dreams, Visions, and Spiri-
tual Authority in Merovingian(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Uni-
versity Press, 2000); Eileen Gardiner, Medieval Visions of
Heaven and Hell: A Sourcebook (New York: Garland,
1993); Forrest S. Smith, Secular and Sacred Visionaries
in the Late Middle Ages (New York: Garland, 1986);