Родерик: Готияның соңғы патшасы

8th century king of the Visigoths
the given name

Roderic (also spelled Ruderic, Roderik, Roderich, or Roderick; Spanish and Rodrigo, translit=Ludharīq; died 711) was the Visigothic king in Hispania between 710 and 711. He is well known as "the last king of the Goths". He is actually an extremely obscure figure about whom little can be said with certainty. He was the last Goth to rule from Toledo, but not the last Gothic king, a distinction which belongs to Ardo. Roderic's election as king was disputed and he ruled only a part of Hispania with an opponent, Achila, ruling the rest. He faced a rebellion of the Basques and the Umayyad invasion. He was defeated and killed at the Battle of Guadalete. His widow Egilona is believed to have married Abd al Aziz ibn Musa, the first Muslim governor of Hispania.

According to the late Chronicle of Alfonso III, Roderic was a son of Theodefred, himself a son of king Chindaswinth, and of a woman named Riccilo. Roderic's exact date of birth is unknown but probably was after 687, estimated from his father's marriage having taken place after his exile to Córdoba following the succession of King Egica in that year.

According to the Chronicle of 754, Roderic "tumultuously [tumultuose] invaded the kingdom [regnum] with the encouragement of [or at the exhortation of] the senate [senatus]." Historians have long debated the exact meaning of these words. What is generally recognised is that it was not a typical palace coup as had occurred on previous occasions, but rather a violent invasion of the palace which sharply divided the kingdom. It is probable that the "invasion" was not from outside the kingdom; because the word regnum can refer to the office of the king, it is likely that Roderic merely usurped the throne. Some scholars believe that the king Achila, who ruled in opposition to Roderic, was in fact Wittiza's son and successor and that Roderic had tried to usurp the throne from him. The senate with which Roderic accomplished his coup was probably composed of the "leading aristocrats and perhaps also some of the bishops." The body of leading temporal and ecclesiastical lords had been the dominant body in determining the Visigothic succession since the reign of Reccared I. The palatine officials, however, had not been much affected by royal measures to decrease their influence in the final decades of the kingdom, as their effecting of a coup in 711 indicates. The regions in which the coins have been discovered do not overlap and it seems highly probable that the two rulers ruled in opposition from different regions. It is unknown to whom the provinces of Gallaecia and Baetica fell. A Visigothic regnal list mentions "Ruderigus" as having reigned seven years and six months, while two other continuations of the Chronicon Regum Visigothorum record Achila's reign of three years. Roderic made several expeditions against the invaders before he was deserted by his troops and killed in battle in 711 or 712. The Chronicle of 754 claims that some of the nobles who had accompanied Roderic on his last expedition did so out of "ambition for the kingdom", perhaps intending to allow him to die in battle so that they could secure the throne for one of themselves. The location of the battle is debatable. It probably occurred near the mouth of the Guadalete river, hence its name, the Battle of Guadalete. According to Paul the Deacon, the site was the otherwise unidentifiable "Transductine promontories". It is possible that the Oppa who fled Toledo and was a son of a previous king was the cause of the "internal fury" which wracked Hispania at the time recorded in the Chronicle. Perhaps Oppa had been declared king at Toledo by Roderic and Achila's rivals, either before Roderic's final defeat or between his death and the Arab capture of Toledo. If so, the death of the nobles who had "ambition for the kingdom" may have been Oppa's supporters who were killed in Toledo by the Arabs shortly after the battle in the south. According to a 9th century chronicle, a tombstone with the inscription Hic requiescit Rodericus, rex Gothorum (here rests Roderic, king of the Goths) was found at Egitania (modern Idanha a Velha, Portugal). According to the legend of Nazaré the king fled the battlefield alone. Roderic left a widow, Egilo, who later married one of the Arabic governors of Hispania, Abd al Aziz ibn Musa.

According to a legend that was for centuries treated as historical fact, Roderic seduced or raped the daughter of Count Julian, known in late accounts as Florinda la Cava. The tale of romance and treachery has inspired many works. Roderic appears in Nights 272 and 273 of the One Thousand and One Nights. In the story, he opens a mysterious door in his castle that was locked and sealed shut by the previous kings. He discovers paintings of Muslim soldiers in the room and a note saying that the city of Toledo will fall to the soldiers in the paintings if the room is ever opened. That coincides with the fall of Toledo. Roderic is a central figure in the English playwright William Rowley's tragedy All's Lost by Lust, which portrays him as a rapist usurped by Count Julian and the Moors. The Scottish writer Walter Scott and the English writers Walter Savage Landor and Robert Southey handled the legends associated with those events poetically: Scott in "The Vision of Don Roderick" in 1811; Landor in his tragedy Count Julian in 1812; and Southey in "Roderick the Last of the Goths", in 1814. The American writer Washington Irving retold the legends in his Legends of the Conquest of Spain (1835), mostly written while living in that country. These consist of "Legend of Don Roderick", "Legend of the Subjugation of Spain", and "Legend of Count Julian and His Family". Roderic has been mentioned in Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "Egotism; or, The Bosom Serpent" by the name of "Don Rodrigo, the Goth" as a sinner that shares a common vice with "a man of impure life, and a brazen face". In Alexander Pushkin's unfinished poem Rodrik (Russian Родрик) Roderic survives the last battle, becomes a hermit and gets a promise of victory from Heaven. Roderic has been the subject of two operas: Rodrigo by George Frideric Handel and Don Rodrigo by Alberto Ginastera. Roderic appears as a minor character in the first half of Portuguese early Romantic writer Alexandre Herculano's novel Eurico, o Presbítero ("Euric, the Presbyter", 1844). Roderic's story is told the British West End musical La Cava (2000).