Amalaric

Amalaric, or in Spanish and Portuguese, Amalarico, (502 – 531) was a son of king Alaric II and of Theodegotho, daughter of Theodoric the Great and his first wife. Amalaric was himself king of the Visigoths from 526 till he was assassinated in 531.

He was a child when his father fell in battle against Clovis I, king of the Franks, in 507. Gesalec was chosen king and the child Amalaric was carried for safety into Hispania. After Gesalec was killed in 511, the country and Provence was thenceforth ruled by Amalaric's maternal grandfather, Theodoric the Ostrogoth, acting through his vice regent, Theudis, an Ostrogothic nobleman. In 522 the young Amalaric was proclaimed king, and four years later, on Theodoric's death, he assumed full royal power in Hispania and that part of Languedoc called Septimania, relinquishing Provence to his cousin Athalaric. He married Chrotilda, daughter of Clovis I; but his disputes with her, he being an Arian and she a Catholic, brought on him the penalty of a Frankish invasion by Childebert I, king of Paris. Amalaric was defeated at Narbonne in 531 and retreated behind the walls of Barcelona, where he was assassinated by his own troops.

Notes

References

• Edward Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Chapter 39

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