Interpretation Options of One Conflict: The Rebellion of 673 from the “History of King Wamba” by Julian of Toledo to the “History of Spain” by Alfonso X the Wise

The article is devoted to the history of interpretations of one of the most large-scale conflicts of the turn of Antiquity and the Middle Ages: the rebellion of Dux Paul against Wamba (672–680), the ruler of the Visigothic Kingdom of Toledo. The civil war, in which the Basques and Franks intervened and which engulfed northeastern Spain and Gallia Narbonensis, took place from September 672 to September 673. A contemporary and participant in the events, Julian of Toledo, in his “History of (King) Wamba” (680s) presented them as a clash between a “pious ruler” (princeps reliogiosus) and a “usurper king” (rex tyrannus), in which the truth was entirely on the side of the former. However, later, in the Latin chronicles written in Spain in the late 9th–13th centuries, the interpretation of the event gradually began to change, and eventually in the Old Castilian “Estoria de Espanna” by Alfonso X the Wise (the Preliminary version, 1270–1274) it was presented as a rebellion of an unfaithful vassal against a worthy lord. The article examines the stages of the formation of this later interpretation.