County of Roussillon - Visigothic County

Visigothic County

There was a Visigothic county around the city of Ruscino in the 6th and 7th centuries with a jurisdiction corresponding to the Diocese of Elna. This primitive county comprising the historic comarques of Plana del Roselló, Conflent, and Vallespir was created by Liuva I in 571. The Visigothic legacy in Roussillon survived in its courts, where Visigothic law was applied exclusively as late as the eleventh century.

Roussillon was occupied by the Moors in 721. It was probably conquered for the Frankish Empire by Pepin the Short and his Visigothic allies in 760, immediately following his conquest of Narbonne, though all that is certain is that it was in Frankish hands during the reign of Charlemagne. Roussillon had been nearly completely depopulated, was not widely cultivated, and land use was very inefficient, which has often been explained by Moorish razzias and Frankish reprisals over a span of forty years.

Pepin reestablished the old Gothic county with its seat at Ruscino. The new count—a Goth—built a castle at their capital: the castrum or castellum Rossilio, by which Ruscino came to be known as Castell-Rosselló. Beginning in 780, Charlemagne started granting aprisiones of desert land in Roussillon and around Narbonne to incoming spani (or hispani, that is, Christian Spaniards of Gothic, Roman, and Basque origin). These spani migrants, along with the native Gothic aristocracy, took part in the reconquest of the southern slopes of the Pyrenees and the Tarraconensian littoral which formed the new Marca Hispanica.