The Visigoths (Latin: Visigothi, Wisigothi, Vesi, Visi, Wesi, or Wisi)

were one of two main branches of the Goths, an East Germanic tribe,
the Ostrogoths being the other. Together these tribes were among
the barbarians who disturbed the late Roman Empire during the
Migration Period. The Visigoths first emerge as a distinct people
during the fourth century, initially in the Balkans, where they
participated in several wars with Rome. A Visigothic army under Alaric
I eventually moved into Italy and famously sacked Rome in 410.

Eventually the Visigoths were settled in southern Gaul as foederati of

the Romans, the reasons for which are still a subject of debate
between scholars. They soon fell out with their hosts and established
their own kingdom with its capital at Toulouse. They slowly extended
their authority into Hispania, displacing the Vandals and Alans. Their
rule in Gaul was cut short in 507 at the Battle of Vouillé, when they
were defeated by the Franks under Clovis I. Thereafter the only
territory north of the Pyrenees that the Visigoths held was Septimania
and their kingdom was limited to Hispania, which came completely
under the control of their small governing elite, at the expense of the
Byzantine province of Spania and the Suebic Kingdom of Galicia.

In or around 589, the Visigoths, under Reccared I, formerly Arian

Christians, converted to the Nicene faith. In their kingdom, the
century that followed was dominated by the Councils of Toledo and
the episcopacy. Historical sources for the seventh century are
relatively sparse. In 711 or 712 the Visigoths, including their king and
many of their leading men, were killed in the Battle of Guadalete by a
force of invading Arabs and Berbers. The kingdom quickly collapsed
thereafter, a phenomenon which has led to much debate among
scholars concerning its causes. Gothic identity survived the fall of the
kingdom, however, especially in the Kingdom of Asturias and the
Marca Hispanica, but the "Visigoths" as a people disappeared.

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Of what remains of the Visigoths in Spain and Portugal there are
several churches and an increasing number of archaeological finds,
but most notably a large number of Spanish, Portuguese, and other
Romance language given names and surnames. The Visigoths were
the only people to found new cities in western Europe after the fall of
the Roman Empire and before the rise of the Carolingians. Until the
Late Middle Ages, the greatest Visigothic legacy, which is no longer in
use, was their law code, the Liber iudiciorum, which formed the basis
for legal procedure in most of Christian Iberia for centuries after their
kingdom's demise.