Probably pushed by other migrant peoples, the Suevi left the eastern bank of the Elbe in the 1st century BC. They form a disparate people made up of different tribes including those of the Quades, Marcomanni and Semmons. Their route to the southwest brought them to the outskirts of Gaul under their king Arioviste, from which Julius Caesar, winner of Arioviste, drove them away in -58. From then on, it was on the eastern bank of the Rhine that they settled, in a region which later took their name, Swabia.
"Great Invasions"
In 406, in the first decades of the Great "barbarian" invasions in the Roman Empire (Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals and Alans among many others, pushed by the Huns), new migratory pressures pushed them to cross the Rhine under their King Hermeric and accompanied by the Hasdings, the Sillings, and several Alan clans (night of Saint Sylvester 406/407). After circulating in Gaul for two years, the Suevi cross the Pyrenees 409, always accompanied by their allies, the Quades and the Marcomanni and continue their quest in Spain. Once they had settled down and become a federated people, and after their kingdom had been recognized by Rome through a foedus, strangely enough the chronicles of Latin annalists no longer speak much of this people.
In As part of the Great Invasions, the Suevi settled in the region of Galicia and northern Portugal today. The period denomination is "Galecia", part of the province of Tarraconaise.
This Suevian kingdom takes Bracara Augusta [1] as its capital and exists from 410 to 584, the year of its collapse in front of the army of the Visigoth kingdom led by King Leovigild.
Travel of the Alans, Sueves and Vandals from 409 to 415 in the Iberian Peninsula, then of the Visigoths who gradually drove them out. The Suevian kingdom remained the last, and temporarily, on their arrival.
Travel of the Alans, Sueves and Vandals from 409 to 415 in the Iberian Peninsula, then of the Visigoths who gradually expelled them. The Suevi kingdom remains last, and temporarily, upon their arrival.
The Roman Gallaecia fell under the control of the Quades and the Marcomanni allied under the direction of the Suevian king Hermeric in 409. The foedus granted by Rome legitimized the foundation of their kingdom in this place. It is the first kingdom of the High Middle Ages to mint coins to signify its existence.
Swebian Kingdom
The number of initial Suevi invaders is estimated at only 30,000 people, settling mainly in the urbanized areas of Braga (Bracara Augusta), Porto, Lugo (Lucus Augusta), Astorga (Asturica Augusta), Vigo, Tuy, Orense. The Suevi made Bracara Augusta, the ancient capital of the Roman province of Gallaecia, the capital of Suevian Gallaecia; this was larger than present-day Galicia, and stretched south of the Douro and eastward as far as Avila.
The Suevian kingdom of Gallaecia was maintained from 410 to 584 and seems to have ensured a stable government throughout this period. Historians like José António Lopes Silva, translator of the chronicles of Idatius, the main written source of the 5th century, believe that the main character of Galician culture was forged from this mixture between Ibero-Roman culture and that of the Suevi.
Map of the Suevian kingdom of Galicia indicating the location of Braga where there are still archaeological remains of the Sueves.Suevian dynasty (5th-6th centuries)green meadow:limits of the Roman provincepink:region having changed authoritygreen :limits of the kingdom.
Map of the Suevian Kingdom of Galicia indicating the location of Braga where there are archaeological remains of the Suebi.
There were some occasional clashes with the Visigoths, who arrived in 416 in the Iberian Peninsula and dominated it almost entirely. Seeking to extend their domination to the south and east, the Suevi were defeated by the Visigoths in 418 and were forced to confine themselves to Galicia.
After the passage of the reunited Vandals and the remains of the Alans in Roman Africa 429, the Sueves again attempt the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula but must oppose the pressures of the Visigoths who are also trying to dominate the country which becomes effective under their powerful king Euric around the year 476. An alliance between the two peoples is concluded, their king Réchiaire converts to the Arianism of the Goths with his people, and the Suevi accompany the Visigoths of king Théodoric to fight the Huns of Attila in the Catalan Fields (451).
The Suevi, pagans and weakly Christianized Arians, ended up in the 6th century by entering a long period of tension and conflict with the Visigoths and converted to Catholicism around 550. Their king Cariaric, who had become a Catholic, even attempted a rapprochement with the Franks, Catholics, against the Goths, Arians, but this does not give any notable result and the great Visigoth king Leovigild, dreaming of the unification of Spain under Ariano-Visigothic domination, soon begins the conquest of the Suevian kingdom in a state of decomposition (from 575); a large minority of Sueves, opposed to Catholics in particular, refused to serve the Catholic King Mirus. After ten years of fierce struggle, the Visigoth king Leovigild invaded their kingdom in 584, defeated them, and included Galicia in his Visigoth kingdom.
After some sporadic revolts in 586 and 587, the Suevi disappeared from history as a people and, again converted to Catholicism from 589 (official conversion of the Visigoths), they merged with the indigenous populations (of Celtiberian ancestry, Lusitanian) and Visigoths.
Richard Fletcher (Fletcher 1984) points out that during Late Antiquity, Galicia had remained a country of the Roman and Mediterranean world. He gives as an example the account of the pilgrimage to the Holy Land of the Galician nun Egeria in 381-384, as well as the journey of the young Idatius who, although living "at the last extremity of the world", had met Jerome in the East.; his chronicle shows that he remained informed of the affairs of the eastern Mediterranean, as he refers to eastern travelers who came to Galicia. Having become a bishop, Idatius traveled to Gaul as an embassy to Aetius, 431-432.
Miro, king of the Suevi, had diplomatic relations with the allied barbarian kings of Neustria and Burgundy, but also with the emperors of Constantinople. Martin de Braga, famous bishop of the 6th century, was a native of Pannonia. The Visigoth King Leovigild confiscated the ships of the Gallic merchants of Galicia.
At Lorenzana, the beautiful sarcophagus which later received the remains of Count Osorio Gutiérrez was probably imported from southern Gaul in the 5th century, notes Fletcher. And one of the coins from the Bordeaux treasury compiled around 700 was stamped with a Galician motif, suggesting possible trade relations.