What are the vandals selling?

Palm'Vandal,' 'vandalized,' 'vandalism'—these are words that evoke images of damaging, ruining, destroying... But perhaps the Vandals weren't as bad as these terms suggest. Certainly, their first encounter with the Balearic Islands was far from amicable: in 425 AD, 1,600 years ago, they sacked these islands, then under Roman rule, and a few years later incorporated them into their domains. Thus began the darkest and least known period in the archipelago's history, until the destruction of their kingdom by General Belisarius, to whom the adopted Mallorcan Robert Graves dedicated one of his historical novels.

But who were the Vandals? They were one of the Germanic peoples who gradually settled in the lands of the Western Roman Empire, eventually conquering them and establishing their own kingdoms. We have a deeply ingrained image of those 'barbarians' – a word that originally meant 'foreigner' – laying waste to everything with fire and sword, and the supposed fall of the empire at their hands. However, it was a much more complicated process, with conflicts, but also with alliances. In fact, the Eastern Roman Empire of Constantinople – the Byzantines – did not fall. On the contrary, over time it would eventually recover a good part of the lost territories. The Balearic Islands included.

Several peoples called barbarians: Alans, Suebi, Visigoths, etc., settled in Hispania, which at that time referred strictly to the Iberian Peninsula. The Vandals chose Baetica, which corresponds, more or less, to what is now Andalusia – which has suggested that this toponym could come precisely from the word 'vandal', removing the 'v'. From here, they launched the raid that devastated the islands in 425. According to Pere Xamena, "they completely ravaged them and carried off a great deal of loot." Although they left the way they had come, leaving the islands still under Roman authority.

What is striking is that this people, who came from the interior of Europe and had traveled to Hispania by land, suddenly learned to navigate, with enough skill to raid islands. It seems they had the help of Hispanic merchants, who placed their ships and experience at their disposal. The fact is, everything is learned in this life, and they became expert sailors. So much so, that they renamed the Mediterranean the Vandal Sea—just like Trump today, with his obsession with calling the Gulf of Mexico the 'Golf of America.'

Were the Vandals really such vandals?

The Vandals were also led by their most prominent ruler, Gaiseric, who governed them from 428 to 477: a reign of almost half a century and exceptional longevity for that time. Gaiseric led his entire people—some 50,000—to a new promised land: North Africa, where they established a kingdom that lasted for nearly a century. They did not, however, abandon their overseas expeditions: in 455 they sacked none other than the city of Rome. Around that same year, the Vandals incorporated the Balearic Islands into their domains. This was a strictly Mediterranean kingdom, largely island-based, as they also established themselves on Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily. This was the first—and only—period in which the islands were not governed from the Iberian Peninsula, but from Africa. Or perhaps from Sardinia? Because it seems they belonged to the Sardinian province, among those that comprised its territories.

The truth is that we know practically nothing about that period when the Archipelago was under 'barbarian' rule. It is a true 'dark age' of our history. The number of Vandals who settled in the Islands must have been very small: perhaps just a few officials. The garrison would not have been Vandal but African.

The remains that have survived from their rule are also very scarce. In the Museum of Mallorca, there is a Vandal coin, from around the year 495, minted in Carthage and found in Santueri. A few more appeared in Cabrera. A handful in Menorca. Pieces of pottery. Some bronzes in Alcudia. A pendant on the islet. And little else.

Were the Vandals really as vandalistic as the name suggests? In the sense we give to the word now—a word, incidentally, coined by Father Henri Grégoire to describe the misdeeds of the French revolutionaries. Probably no more so than the other invaders of their time. And certainly less so. The Roman historian Procopius said of them that they were "the most delicate of peoples," and of their king, Gaiseric, that he was a man as brave as he was wise. The western Mediterranean enjoyed a true pax vandala During that period. It doesn't sound very 'barbaric', all of it.

In fact, with Vandal rule, practically nothing changed for the inhabitants of the Islands. The cities continued their activity, although there was a certain tendency—as everywhere—to increase the percentage of the population living in the countryside. Trade remained in the hands of the Romanized islanders. The Vandals lowered taxes, a measure with which the citizens of the Archipelago must have been delighted. The Islands, however, served as a destination for exiles, but this is a use they have maintained for centuries, until the time of Jovellanos and until temporary, voluntary, and paid exile was invented—that is, tourism. They were also a breeding ground for spying on the movements of enemies.

The three rebel bishops

However, in one aspect—very important for the time—it is true that the new rulers were not so kind. The Vandals were Arians, another variant of Christianity, which affirmed that Jesus was the son of God, but not exactly God, not eternal, while their subjects were Catholic. Of course, there were periods of persecution and others of relative tolerance. Genseric's son, Hunneric, ordered the bishops of all his territories to appear in Carthage, with the aim of having them all declare their submission to the Arian faith. One of the few written accounts that has come down to us from this period mentions the names of the three bishops of the three dioceses: Macarius of Menorca, Helias of Majorca, and Oplius of Ibiza, in that order. The three are cited in a list of Sardinian prelates, headed by 'Lucifer of Cagliari'—how could a bishop be called 'Lucifer'?—given that this was his province.

The three bishops of the islands flatly refused to renounce their faith, and for this reason they were exiled. Not in the Balearic Islands, obviously. They are the first names we know of a bishop of Majorca—Helias—and one of Ibiza—Opili. There is an earlier record of one bishop of Menorca: Severus, the author of the famous letter recounting the supposed 'miraculous'—in reality, forced—conversion of the Menorcan Jews to Christianity.

All this raises the question: were the Balearic Islands truly under Vandal rule during those dark times? The question seems pertinent, given the scarcity of witnesses. But above all, because historians of the Balearic Islands' past had a different theory about who had claimed the islands at that time: the Visigoths, of course. 'Spain' was identified with 'the kingdom of the vessels,' and 'the loss of Spain' was that of King Roderic. It could never be that a part of the state had not been under his rule—the Canary Islands are a separate case, and in fact, they say 'vases' there, as the mainlanders do.

The chroniclers Joan Binimelis and Joan Dameto claimed that the vessels had conquered the Balearic Islands. It took another 'authority,' Josep Maria Quadrado, to make it perfectly clear that it was the Vandals who had done so. So much so: the children of the islands still had to learn the list of kings—the vessels—who had never been their own.

The Vandal kingdom fell in 533 to the Byzantine sword, led by General Belisarius, to whom Robert Graves, a British writer living in Deià, dedicated one of his novels. One of his officers, Apollinaris, reconquered the islands for the Eastern Roman Empire. Very little remained of the Vandals. Only that derogatory expression, which perhaps doesn't do them justice.

Information compiled from texts by José Amengual y Alcalde, Miguel Ángel Casasnovas, Pedro Xamena Fiol, Carlos Garrido, David Álvarez Jiménez and José Orlandis and the collective volume The Islands in Classical Sources.