Claudius was a Hispano-Roman Catholic dux

Dux

Dux is Latin for leader and later for Duke and its variant forms ....

(duke) of Lusitania

Lusitania

Lusitania or Hispania Lusitania was an ancient Roman province including approximately all of modern Portugal south of the Douro river and part of modern Spain . It was named after the Lusitani or Lusitanian people...

 (or dux Emeretensis civitatis) in the late sixth century. He was one of the most successful generals of Reccared I.

In 587, after a count named Witteric

Witteric

Witteric was Visigothic King of Hispania, Septimania and Galicia from 603 to 610....

 had exposed the plot of Sunna, the Arian

Arianism

Arianism is the theological teaching attributed to Arius , a Christian presbyter from Alexandria, Egypt, concerning the relationship of the entities of the Trinity and the precise nature of the Son of God as being a subordinate entity to God the Father...

 bishop of Mérida

Mérida, Spain

Mérida is the capital of the autonomous community of Extremadura, western central Spain. It has a population of 57,127 . The Archaeological Ensemble of Mérida is a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1993.- Climate :...

, to place the Visigoth

Visigoth

The Visigoths were one of two main branches of the Goths, the Ostrogoths being the other. These tribes were among the Germans who spread through the late Roman Empire during the Migration Period...

 Segga

Segga

Segga was a Visigothic usurper who briefly claimed the kingship in 587 before being put down by the legitimate sovereign, Reccared I.Following Reccared's conversion from Arianism to Catholicism, a conspiracy, led by Sunna, the Arian bishop of Mérida, arose to place the Arian Segga on the throne and...

 on the throne and probably to also kill the Catholic Méridan bishop Masona

Masona

Masona or Mausona was the Bishop of Mérida and metropolitan of the province of Lusitania from about 570 until his death...

, Claudius was sent to put down the revolt. Segga was captured, his hands cut off (the penalty for usurpers), and banished to Galicia. The less important conspirators were deprived of their property and offices and sent into exile, but one of the chief rebels, Vagrila, took refuge in the basilica of Saint Eulalia. Claudius was told, upon request, to give Vagrila, his family, and his possessions over to the church of Mérida, which he did. Masona, however, released Vagrila and his family and returned his property to him.

In 589, when the Frankish

Franks

The Franks were a confederation of Germanic tribes first attested in the third century AD as living north and east of the Lower Rhine River. From the third to fifth centuries some Franks raided Roman territory while other Franks joined the Roman troops in Gaul. Only the Salian Franks formed a...

 king Guntram

Guntram

Saint Guntram was the king of Burgundy from 561 to 592. He was a son of Chlothar I and Ingunda...

 sent an army under the general Boso into Septimania

Septimania

Septimania was the western region of the Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis that passed under the control of the Visigoths in 462, when Septimania was ceded to their king, Theodoric II. Under the Visigoths it was known as simply Gallia or Narbonensis. It corresponded roughly with the modern...

 in support of a rebellion by the Arian archbishop Athaloc

Athaloc

Athaloc was the Visigothic Arian Archbishop of Narbonne at the time of the Third Council of Toledo in 589. He was the metropolitan of his province in parallel with the Catholic hierarchy....

, Claudius was sent by King Reccared to defeat it. Near Carcassonne

Carcassonne

Carcassonne is a fortified French town in the Aude department, of which it is the prefecture, in the former province of Languedoc.It is divided into the fortified Cité de Carcassonne and the more expansive lower city, the ville basse. Carcassone was founded by the Visigoths in the fifth century,...

 on the river Aude

Aude

Aude is a department in south-central France named after the river Aude. The local council also calls the department "Cathar Country".Aude is also a frequent feminine French given name in Francophone countries, deriving initially from Aude or Oda, a wife of Bertrand, Duke of Aquitaine, and mother...

, Claudius surprised the Franks and routed them, killing 5,000 and capturing 2,000, as well as their camp. According to Isidore of Seville

Isidore of Seville

Saint Isidore of Seville served as Archbishop of Seville for more than three decades and is considered, as the historian Montalembert put it in an oft-quoted phrase, "le dernier savant du monde ancien"...

, nulla umquam in Hispaniis Gothorum uictoria uel maior in bello vel similis extitit: "No victory of the Goths in Spain was ever greater or even equal to it." The chronicler John of Biclarum, with even more excitement, exaggerated his figures to make Claudius, the next Gideon, defeat 60,000 Franks (the evil Midianites in the biblical metaphor) with merely 300 men.

Sources

• Thompson, E. A. The Goths in Spain. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969. ISBN 0-19-814271-4
• Collins, Roger. Visigothic Spain, 409–711. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. ISBN 0-631-18185-7
• Collins, Roger. "King Leovigild and the Conversion of the Visigoths." Law, Regionalism and Culture in Early Medieval Spain. Variorum, 1992. ISBN 0-86078-308-1
• Fontaine, Jacques. "King Sisebut's Vita Desiderii and the Political Function of Visigothic Hagiography." Visigothic Spain. ed. Edward James
  Edward James (historian)
  Edward James is Professor of Medieval History at University College, Dublin. He received a BA 1968; DPhil in 1975. He was a Lecturer, then College Lecturer, at the Department of Medieval History, University College Dublin from 1970-1978...
  
  . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980. ISBN 0-19-822543-1