ALARIC II

died 507 king of the Visigoths, who succeeded his father Euric on Dec. 28, 484. His dominions comprised Spain (except the kingdom of Galicia), Aquitaine, Languedoc, and western Provence. Alaric, like his father, was an Arian Christian, but he mitigated the persecution of Catholics and authorized the Catholic council at Agde in 506. To provide a law code for his Roman subjects, he appointed a commission to prepare an abstract of Roman laws and imperial decrees. This code, issued in 506, is generally known as the Lex Romana Visigothorum, or Breviary of Alaric. Alaric tried to maintain his father's treaty with the Franks, but Clovis, the Frankish king, made the Visigoths' Arianism a pretext for war. In 507 the Visigoths were defeated in the battle of the Campus Vogladensis (Vouill, or Vougl, in Poitou). Alaric is said to have been overtaken in flight and killed by Clovis himself.