EURICO, re dei VISIGOTI. - B. around 420, d. in Sept. 485, he was the founder of Visigothic power in France and in Spain. Strong and cunning, he ascended the throne in 466 after having violently eliminated his brother Theodoric II. He took advantage of the internal struggles and the revolutions in which the Roman Empire was dissolving to occupy, in 474, the entire territory between the Loire and the Mediterranean, except for Auvergne which, despite the stubborn resistance put up by its inhabitants, was ceded by Julius Nepos in the peace treaty. From 481 to 484 he succeeded in conquering Arles, Marseilles and all of Provence.

Having then allied himself with other barbarian chiefs, he occupied a large part of Spain. He easily repelled an attack by the Burgundians, who had made war on him out of concern over his growing power, and he relentlessly pursued the pirates who were ravaging the coasts. He was the greatest barbarian king of his time, and not only for his conquests, but also and above all because around 480 he drew up the first code of Visigothic laws. For this purpose he made use of the work of Roman jurists and particularly of Leo, who was also his prime minister. The fragments that remain to us of E.'s code show the same Roman laws barely modified by the introduction of Visigothic national traditions. He was just in governing the peoples subject to him, but, though without constantly persecuting the Catholics, he showed distrust toward the clergy and even exiled two bishops.

Bibliography7 works

BIBL.: J. Garcia y Garcia, Historia de la Ley primitiva de los visigotos y descubrimiento de algunos de sus capítulos, Madrid 1861; F. Dahn, Die Könige der Germanen, V. Würzburg 1870, pp. 88-103; A. Gaudenzi, Un'antica complizione di diritto romano e visigotico con alcuni frammenti delle leggi di E. tratte da un manoscritto della Biblioteca di Holthaus, Bologna 1887; F. Dahn, Storia delle origini dei popoli germanici e romanici, I, Milano 1901; in G. Oncken, Storia universale, 2nd series, II, pp. 476-81; O. Sock, s. v. in Pauly-Wissows, VI, coll. 1230-1242; L. Halphen, Les barbares, 2nd ed., Paris 1926, pp. 39-41.

Emma Santovico

@incollection{ec5_eurico_re_dei_visigoti, author = {Santovito, Emma}, title = {Eurico, re dei visigoti}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {V}, pages = {812}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1950}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/eurico-re-dei-visigoti} }

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Euric, King of the Visigoths

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