Visigothic

Visigothic is an adjective used to describe the Visigoths and the historical, cultural, and linguistic phenomena associated with them, especially in late antiquity and early medieval western Europe. The Visigoths were a branch of the Gothic peoples, originally East Germanic, who settled in the Roman world in the 4th–5th centuries and later established a kingdom in the Iberian Peninsula.

In the West, the Visigoths formed a powerful state after moving from Gaul into Hispania in the 5th century. Their Iberian kingdom endured from roughly the late 5th century until the early 8th century, with Toledo generally serving as the political center from the 6th century onward. A key moment in Visigothic history was the conversion to Catholic Christianity under King Reccared I in 589, which aligned the kingdom with the Roman church and the broader Latin Christian world. The legal system was codified in the Liber Judiciorum (often called the Visigothic Code) around 654, merging Germanic custom with Roman law and shaping Iberian legal tradition for centuries.

Visigothic culture blended Gothic and Roman elements. Material culture includes early medieval architecture with features such as early forms of the horseshoe arch and distinctive metalwork, as well as a script and inscriptions used in administration and religious texts. Latin remained the language of administration, education, and liturgy, while the Visigothic language—an East Germanic tongue—survived in limited usage alongside Latin and gradually faded after the kingdom’s collapse.

The Visigothic realm fell after the Moorish invasion of 711. The term “Visigothic” is therefore used today to describe the period, institutions, art, and language of this Latin-inflected Germanic heritage in Iberia and, more broadly, to reference the broader medieval influence of the Visigoths in western Europe.